If there is the slightest noise in our house at night, I can hear Sadie and Daisy’s “growl box” idle at a low, steady grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Sometimes that is all I hear…the “grrrrrrrrr” and then they settle down and the night rests in silence…except for a few snores here and there. The other night was so different.
The “grrrrrrr” started around midnight. I had been asleep for a good 2 hours. Bill was out of town. Thomas was home for a few days but I was pretty sure he wasn’t in for the night yet. The “grrrrr” turned into an all out barking fiesta. They never settled down so I decided it was time to get up and bravely walk the house. I hit the all on light which turns on every light inside and outside of our house. The barking continued as I combed our entire house. Thomas was home but sound asleep, not even roused by the fury of clamoring dogs. For the life of me I could not figure out what on earth they were so upset about.
I trudged back to bed and tried to ignore their “rage”. I think they must have settled down about 4 a.m. The next morning they were calm and sleeping when I got up at my usual 5:30 a.m. It was a little eerie to get up and look around the house and outside in the day light and see nothing that could have upset them. It wasn’t until around noon that next day that I was able to put the mystery together.
I first learned from a text that my next door neighbor had died suddenly. As I gathered information from my next door neighbor, I learned that EMS had come in the early morning, after he realized his precious wife, Anne, was not breathing. The dogs were barking at the EMS and the commotion next door. All of which I never saw! What a sad realization to know my beautiful, sweet and kind neighbor had died suddenly and it was in their distress and emergency that our dogs were “raising the roof” at our house.
As I visited with my devastated neighbor, he showed me a picture of him and his bride and their friends that had literally been taken just minutes before her life was gone. All smiles and hugs in one minute and everyone in that picture literally devastated and in shock the next minute and in the days after. Surreal!
It has had me really thinking and meditating for hours on the “sharp” turns that life takes. The suddenness of the fact that life changes forever in the blink of an eye. The realization that this life doesn’t go on forever.
At any time, without notice. we. can. be. gone.
As morbid as it is to be talking about death, it is a natural and very REAL part of life on this earth. As James 4:14 says, “Why do you not even know what will happen tomorrow, what is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while then vanishes.” In light of eternity, our life on earth is just a “mist.” That little “vapor” that we call life is so important in light of how and where we will spend eternity. We can choose Jesus. We can choose to accept him as our Lord and Savior and it is at that moment that we are sealed for citizenship in heaven. Ephesians 1:12-14, “So that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”
But then there is that part of life, once we invite Jesus into our heart, where we spend our days laboring for Him. Through our labor He acts in and through our lives so that we can “bear fruit”. That is where our rewards in heaven come from. Salvation is a free gift. We either accept it or not but our rewards in heaven are from our “obedience to live for Him a surrendered life on earth.”
That “vapor” is oh so important for “infinity”. Romans 14:11-12 says, “It is written, ‘As surely as I live’, says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.’ So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.” And in Revelation 22:12 Jesus states, “Behold I am coming quickly, and my reward is with me, to render to every man according to what he has done.”
So today, I ask myself, and I pose to you in this post, have you given your life to Christ? Is He Lord? Does He call the shots? Or, have you invited Him in but you still maintain control of the “wheel of your life?”
I encourage you to embrace, seek and live the scripture found in John 10:27-29, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they FOLLOW me. I give them eternal life and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” And 1 Peter 1:3-5, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith you are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.”
It is oh so important to remember and live Ephesians 2:10. “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” What is there for me/you/us to be doing today? We are not promised tomorrow.
It is GO TIME!