When Death Comes-a-Knocking

What are the odds that two people you know would pass on on the same day. In two totally unrelated incidents. Happened to me yesterday and I was reminded how I am living on borrowed time and how I take it for granted every day.

None of us ever thinks that death will befall the people we love. Its something that only happens next door. Our families are going to be around forever... right? That's what we think. As a result we go for days , weeks and sometimes decades without communicating with the people closest to our hearts. We allow distance and time to separate us and we allow life to come between us. We have our priorities all messed up and we neglect the things that ought to matter most. We forget to say "Hi, How are you today". We hardly ever say "I love you."  And "Thank you" has ceased to exist in our vocabularies. We fight over trivial things and we don't say "I'm sorry." We continue to grow apart and those of us who are away at work in other countries have begun to replace love and affection with money and other meaningless material things. We assume that they know we love them. How can they when the words have never passed our lips. We waste time being angry over petty things and we let molehills turn into the Himalayas and divide us unnecessarily. We always say to ourselves "I'll call tomorrow" but tomorrow never comes.   We put our dreams aside- after all we have the rest of our lives to do it right? Not! We have all these things that we have been meaning to do for years but have never gotten around to do it. All these wrongs we need to right.

We have forgotten that tomorrow isn't promised to anyone and when we hear that a loved one has departed we get into shock. Our minds instantly rush to all the could have beens and would have beens. That's when we find ourselves full of regret and often inconsolable. We think of the things we meant to say to them but never did, the I love yous, the apologies. We think of the times we wanted to visit but came up with one excuse or another and stayed at home. We forget that death gives no notice nor warning, it sneaks up on us and cruelly snatches our family and our friends. We don't know when or how it will strike but until it does we never give it a thought. If  you were to receive that dreaded call today would yo be able to grieve without regret.

Maybe its your time that's run out. Would those close to you salute you and celebrate you. Can you say you have truly lived. What kind of race are you running? What king of crown is waiting for you on the other side?

I don't know about you but when my turn to leave this earth comes I want to have done the best I can, loved the best I can and lived the best I can... So that when the saints go marching in I will be among them, waiting expectantly to see my Lord.