What did you do this Sunday afternoon?

My wife's childhood friend and her husband spent this Sunday afternoon lying in a hospital bed with their 16-year old daughter and telling her good-bye. Not for them to leave her to go home, but for her to leave her body and enter into eternity. She was mortally injured in an ATV accident. Her younger cousin was slightly injured. A fun-filled afternoon of riding all terrain vehicles for two cousins ended tragically. A family is making plans to bury a child, a sister, a grandchild, a niece, a cousin, and a friend. A family is holding onto photographs, memories, and perhaps a favorite item while trying to hold each other together without this young member. Thoughts of what was and could have been are running rampant. Things once deemed very important no longer even matter.

So, what did you do this Sunday afternoon? Did you spend it griping and complaining about something that did or didn't happen at church this morning? Was there a time of talking about someone else to someone else? Was a televised race, golf tournament, or ball game more important than anything the children wanted this afternoon? Did you spend time with work you brought home from the office...again...instead of with the wife or husband? Did you give any thought to what you have rather than thinking about what you don't have? Did you do like me and just enjoy a lazy afternoon not giving any thought to anything?

The human species is a strange being. We have this great capacity for learning from experience and yet, this great capacity for becoming complacent and ignorant to those experiences. On December 23, 2004, my youngest daughter was dying in a pediatrician's office and carried to a hospital emergency room by ambulance. A life flight team from the local children's hospital came in, took over, and rushed her to the ICU at the children's hospital. I remember praying for God to let me trade places. I remember her whole life going through my head. I remember going home and telling her three older sisters that they needed to pray because their youngest sister was at death's door. I remember hugging those three sisters as one and realizing that nothing was more important on this earth than them. I cannot tell you everything that went through my mind in that short afternoon. Thankfully, God let us keep our youngest. She was diagnosed as a Type 1 diabetic after the pediatrician had made a major misdiagnosis. She is very much alive and active. But, seven years down the road and I find myself sometimes forgetting what is important and what really matters.

Life is short and when it ends at sixteen, it never really got started. We are not guaranteed tomorrow. We are not even guaranteed the rest of the day. Our time on the earth is micro-miniscule compared to the time our bodies spend in the earth. I believe in the afterlife. I believe in a heaven where God reigns. I believe the only way to that heaven is through his son, Jesus Christ by grace alone through faith alone. I believe there is no way for me to enter the presence of God except by acceptance of the free gift of salvation by his Son. You may or may not believe as I do. However, if you are a friend, you matter to me and because you matter to me, I want you to know why I believe as I do and share it with you. If I ask to talk to you about Jesus, it is not because I'm some fanatical bubble headed intellectual simpleton, it is because life is short and you matter to me.