No One is Immune

"Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit." 

Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. 

You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, 

"If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that." 

- James 4:13-15

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We had a funeral today for a man we met a little under a year ago. He was young, and leaves behind a wife and children, the smallest being a 2 yr old baby girl. In preparing for the funeral, I went with Andrew to visit with the family yesterday, and sat quietly across from the widow, a woman now left to raise her 4 children alone. She held out her phone to me, to show me a video she had recently taken at the park. The father swung on the swing, baby girl in his lap, and they were both laughing, looking up at the camera. I knew then that any strength I had previously had was now gone, and the tears began to fall. Tears for this widow, tears for her babies, tears for the milestones ahead where this father and husband would be missed, and somehow, even tears for me, as I came face to face with my own mortality, and that of my own husband. 

Death happens to us all. 

No one is immune. 

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On the way to the funeral today, I told Andrew: "I've always believed that Jesus will come back in my lifetime, and my loved ones and I won't have to die, because Jesus will come back before then." And it's true, I've believed that for a long time. But when I thought about why I believed that, it's not necessarily because our times are so much different than that of previous generations in comparison to the end-times described in scripture, but more so, because of my own denial over the fact that my loved ones will die one day. I've never wanted to face that. I've never wanted to entertain that thought, because my reality without my family is not a reality I want to live in. It hurts too much to even think about. So somewhere through my childhood, I told myself that Jesus would come for me, that He knew my heart, and that He'd make it all OK. As an adult, I still tell myself that, but, unfortunately, I'm no longer so naive to think that pain won't hit home. 

Pain does it home. 

No one is immune. 

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There's a certain urgency that overtakes me when I think about the possibility of dying young. I want to leave letters for the girls, videos of us laughing together, talking, singing. I want to say all of the things they've never heard, or the words I was too embarrassed to say. I want to tell Andrew how deeply happy I am, how he changed my world, my heart, how I never would have known true love and joy had he not entered my life. I want my family to know how much I love them, how blessed I am by them, and how thankful I am that God placed me here, in this life. 

This urgency pushes me to live life sweeter, to live life fuller. 

But the problem is, so often we lose sight of why we're really on this earth, and we lose sight of what really happens. We lose our urgency, and we go back to living lives that are overworked, under appreciated, and dull. We make plans to do things that don't really matter, and we fill our days with "stuff" instead of with the joy of living, which Christ intended for us. 

We are only vapors, here but for a moment. 

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Today we buried Dave, and he no longer has the chance to live with his family and friends. He can't come back and redo anything, and he can't come back for birthdays or holidays or lazy rainy days or just the mundane days. His time here was up, and God called him home. 

And fellow Christian, we never know when God is going to call us home too...

So shouldn't we be living in urgency? Shouldn't we be living these days as if they're our last, and being sure to live well, and love well, and embrace what God has given? 

Yes, we should. Because we never know how much time we have left. 

Death happens to us all.

No one is immune.