Refocus
It always amazes me how we all run around each day as if we were going to live forever – when the only true reality is that death can come at any time. We are not in control of when this will happen – even though we try many different schemes/ ways such as healthy lifestyles and anti-age treatments to prolong our time on earth. Death is a certainty! So why not view our end as a good way to focus on what’s important in life.
The Puritans had a healthy understanding on morality and spent a great deal of their time mediating on death. This I know sounds morbid but spending time thinking about how precious life is can give us a reality check and help focus on what is important in life. It also throws up the question – what on earth are we doing here when our lives are so fleeting. The Bible has numerous passages relating to our time span on earth – James 4:14 “Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” Psalm 90:12 “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”
Spending time studying some of these versus can cut right through your very being and give you a greater awareness of truth and a clearer vision of our mortality. What harm can it do to spend time contemplating our death? Even when I write this sentence I feel like deleting them as it doesn’t sound good and it’s not positive and it’s not what anyone one wants to hear. But that would be wrong, as most of us need to buck up and come to terms with reality – why? Because then we can start living the life that God wants us to have. It all boils down to the fact that one day our life on this planet will end and there is only one person who decides the time, the day and the year and that is our Creator. Theologian and author David Saxton stated that mediating on our own death “purifies the life and focuses our priorities.”
One of my favorite books in the Bible is Ecclesiastics as it describes the author Solomon’s obsession on the meaning and purpose of life. He had everything money could buy and he tried to experience everything but at the end of the day nothing gave him peace in his heart. His conclusion was “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God, will bring every deed into judgement, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”