“Have you heard anything?”
I received this text message one Saturday afternoon. After reading it, I read the string of messages I had not read throughout the day. It turns out that one of my former colleagues had died the previous day.
How sad. He worked for the company 40 years. Two months after retiring, he departed this life!
I could not get it out of my head what had happened. As far as I knew, the deceased was in good health. The good thing is that he was a Christian. For him, death is not doom but his rite of passage into eternity.
After I received the sad news, I thought about how quickly life can end. And what about those who were not saved and who died before accepting Christ? No doubt, some of them would have accepted Him later had they been blessed to live longer.
But that’s the point. There are no guarantees. Life is uncertain. Tomorrow is not promised to us.
The Uncertainty of Life
We tend to take life for granted. We assume tomorrow is a given. The last time I checked, however, you don’t have to be old or sick to die this very moment. Have you ever read or heard about a perfectly healthy high school athlete who mysteriously died during sports practice? I have a number of times. The grave comes in all sizes, and death comes to all ages and by many means.
“You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow,” James writes. “You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away” (James 4:14, NASB).
Some people gage the need to accept Christ by when they think the Lord will return. To them, as long as they accept Christ before that time, they will be OK.
That is a serious gamble with one’s soul. Christ may not come tomorrow. But also, tomorrow is not promised to any of us. That’s why accepting Christ should be a matter a priority for everyone.
Our enemy the devil wars against the soul of the lost. He wants to keep those who are in the dark in spiritual darkness. The Bible refers to him as “the god of this world.” He has “blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ… should shine unto them” (2 Corinthians 4:4, KJV). He deceives them to think they have until tomorrow to do what they need to do today.
But there is no guarantee that will be the case for anyone. I am glad my former colleague did not gamble with his soul. Tomorrow is not promised to any of us. All we know we have is today. By the way, that’s also why Christians should regard the need to reach out to the lost as a matter of urgency.
Copyright © 2022 by Frank King. All rights reserved.