July 17, 2013

 James 4:13-15 — Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.

 I have been saddened over the past few days by two deaths. One a young man, a TV star, a young man loved by many. Like so many, he died from a self-inflicted drug overdose.The other a man full of years, also well-loved, having touched many lives with his music. It might be said that one life was well and fully spent, and the other wasted — but how much does it matter?

Shakespeare wrote “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones” — but I doubt that it is really so. I have seen that most people are soon forgotten and that neither celebrity nor family often preserves memories beyond a generation or two. In Ecclesiastes we find “For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool.” Under the sun — in the world — that’s how it is. Most of us, most of the time, are preoccupied with self. We remember, from time to time, those who were close to us but mostly to regret their absence in our lives. Of the two men whose passing has affected me I’m pretty sure that the older will be remembered more frequently, more fondly, and more truly — for a generation or two. The younger man, I fear, will be forgotten more quickly, sinking soon into the sea of anonymity.

We leave fewer memories than we might like — but we take our lives with us into eternity. Those two men will have made their last appointment now. Each will have faced their last judgment. I’m pretty confident about the eternal future of one, and have no idea about the other. I, and all the others who knew the musician, can be comforted knowing that he has entered into the joy of his Master. For the younger man, we can only hope that those who know him closely have the same comfort.

Let’s revisit how it works.

In a moment this life, this vapor, vanishes. Those that have not claimed Jesus as their Lord and Savior are condemned — no matter what the actions of their lives — to eternity in hell. Those who have admitted their guilt, and claimed their Master are welcomed — with rewards according to their life’s work — to eternal life with Him.

If you are undecided, don’t wait! You can be gone in a moment — it can be your own mistake, or the malicious act of another, it can be illness or the accidents of a fallen world. It doesn’t matter. In the blink of an eye, out of this life and into the next. Not much remembered, but not much caring …