The brother in law of coworker past away last Friday. It was totally unexpected. It was thought that he had a heart attack even though he was believed to have been in good health. He was 3 years younger than me. They found him laying on his kitchen floor. I have noticed many people in my age range passing from unforeseen circumstances. I suppose we all must be in that special time of life.
I started watching the obit page back when my Mom died. It is strange how many young people die, but there seems to be an alarming curve upward in the death rate once people start hitting 50.
The average life expectancy in America is sitting at 71 years right now. My Mom hit that one on the nose. I have two grandparents that lived to 89 and 90 years each, one that lived to 83 and another that lived to 59. There just are no guarantees regarding how much time we all have left. We can be recalled at anytime for any reason.
I think about some of the people I knew in high school that have passed that I also considered friends of mine. There is a suicide, an AIDS victim, an alcoholic that passed out and fell down the stairs of his home and a cancer victim. These are just the ones I know about. There are probably others. I find myself wondering if they were prepared to pass into eternity.
Many people think that if they just live right, do good things and avoid violent crimes, etc they will be prepared to meet their maker. Others you must make the most of what you do here because there is nothing else. I wish for them that this was correct, but both my mind and my faith tell me otherwise. The truth is...
It is not so much what you do. It's who you know.
And there are many in this world who know who Jesus is. Many of them believed in Him at one time in their lives, but they walked away from Him for any number of reasons. The big reasons go something like this.
1) They do not like the company that Jesus keeps...meaning Christians of course; The Church. Now I would be the first to admit that we are a weird bunch, but we are really no weirder than you are, at least from our perspective. We are sinners too, but we acknowledge that. We are just saved by God's grace. We do have some standards that we believe come from God that are hard for many to accept and we have trouble consistently maintaining these standards ourselves, but we are trying I think. Some see us as self righteous and uncompassionate because of the way we hold up these standards and I think there is some room for discussion there, but the bottom line is that these standards are God's and not of our own manufacture.
2) There are others that have concluded that if God is the God of the Bible, they want nothing to do with Him. He is a bully. My answer would be that He is not a bully, but even if He were, He is God. Ultimately you will surrender control. There will be no choice. Why not change your mind about this now while there is a choice and avoid condemnation? God is willing if you are.
3) My favorite objection of the newly faithless is anger at God. This one has to be my favorite since I have been there and done that, and got the T-shirt. Anger at God, as I have learned, is a fruitless effort and a waste of energy from my experience. God essentially put me in a corner and told me to think about what I had done. As it turned out, I was not only angry, I was pretty stubborn. Between the ages of 23 and 37 God and I did not speak. The anger actually started at a much earlier age, but I gave up on Him and refused to accept what He was trying to tell me when I was 23. There are just some things one just does not want to deal with. Maybe some day I will talk about the actual issue. That ain't today. Suffice it to say, since that time, I have submitted myself to His will. It has been tough. I am still not perfect. I do not think I will be completely dead to sin until I am dead...which is the subject here. I do know this however. I am going to live forever with Him and that's all that matters to me really.
4) The scariest objectors to God are those that have no faith at all. Atheists are among the most self righteous, proud and arrogant people on earth. They outclass any hypocritical Christian any day of the week because when they say there is no God, they claim to know everything. The only way anyone can know there is no God is if they know everything. It does not get more arrogant than that. In the process, they become their own god and they create their own morality simply because they have no reason not to. After all, they know everything.
5) Another class of faithless people are agnostics. They admit they do not know everything and they are not sure if there is a God, but they are willing to listen. This is usually where it ends. If a proposed "God" is not created in their own image, it will get rejected. Agnostics are more malleable though, less proud and more willing to entertain the idea that one must submit to God to be successful in faith and life.
I could go on, but I won't, except to say this. If you are in one of these five groups, you need to reconsider your position. God is a God of love, grace and compassion, but He is also a God of justice. The time is now for the first three items. Justice will be delivered in the future. Get yourself within His grace now. Tomorrow you could be dead and the only thing that will lie ahead for you is His justice. It will be too late for anything else.
