It’s a Matter of Life and Death

“It’s a matter of life and death.” . . . We’ve all heard that phrase used most often when life is threatened. In the middle of the night last night, I was reminded—again—of how life is constantly a matter of life and death. A very close friend of mine’s wife died last night. Even though she did have some on-going health issues, something happened with her heart that had nothing to do with any of that. She was apparently fine on Saturday and died on the operating table during open heart surgery very early Monday morning. Today, I am grateful she is with the Lord, but I am brokenhearted for her husband and 2 grown kids who are left here with a hole in their hearts. Christmas will never be the same to him again. Every Christmas carol, every decoration will be a reminder of the week his love went away. . . . . Now segue that to tomorrow is my birthday. Birthdays are a time when we look back on another year of life and forward to another year, full of hope to be better than the year before. Birthdays are just commas in the sentence we write called life where we can pause and look back at what we have written and look forward to what we will write. We eat some cake, sing a song, open a few cards, and then we write on again. . . . So, there’s a day out there with my name on it when I too will stop writing my life. Your day is out there as well. We don’t know when. Maybe before the next birthday or maybe in 30 more birthdays. Only God knows. So, what do we do? We keep writing the story of our lives. Write things that matter. Write things that last. Write as an instrument in the hand of God. . . . It’s a matter of life and death.