It’s amazing the emotions that music can arise inside of us. I am sitting here on my couch just before midnight listening to some songs in iTunes… thinking. The playlist just hit David Gray’s “Otherside,” and I find myself thinking about the life after this one. What it will be like? Will the journey be instantaneous from this world to the next? Will I know immediately that I have stepped from this life into eternity? Who will be there waiting? To all of these questions I have to confess that although I have my thoughts and opinions I truly don’t know. The afterlife is a fascinating, and at the same time, scary reality. Some day, each and everyone of us will step into eternity and stand before our creator. Standing there, completely exposed, with our life’s deeds laid out before us, what will we say?
Will I have lived it right?
Will I have accomplished what I was suppose to?
Did I use my talents unselfishly and complete the task that I was assigned?
Did I love others?
Was I salt?
Was I light?
Did I….
Was I…
The questions could go on all day but only one questions matters…
“Is Christ being formed in me?”
Have I totally surrendered myself to the Lordship of Christ? Do I look more like Jesus today than yesterday? Do my actions, words, character, and desires show that I am a follower of the Messiah? Am I truly following my Master, or just trying to escape hell’s flame?
As I get older, as I watch my little girl grow up, I have been realizing how the things that I thought were important really are not. This life is so short, yet we have all eternity to remember it. For some to rejoice in the correct choices, and for some to regret and mourn the wrong ones.
But the most important choice – the deciding choice – have you, have I, followed Christ. Have we picked up our execution stake and followed Him?
Have we truly followed Him…….?
By God’s grace, I am getting closer to those beautiful words: “Well done my good and faithful servant.”
Lord: continue your work in me. Change me everyday so that I will conform more to your image. Have your way in me.
Shalom!
Brent
Wow, Brent, this is good. It reminds me of a book I once read called “The Bema” by Tim Stevenson. It’s a fictional story about a man who has to go before God’s judgment seat, the Bema, and have his life striped away and picked apart, and everything that he had done in his life was looked at. And in the end, he did not achieve the “Well done, good and faithful servant”. Only, “Well done.”
It made me rethink my life.
Brent that’s really good – I think you touched on that Thursday and it really made me think about it in a way maybe I haven’t before. God’s word says we’re going to have to give an account and asking questions like these forces us to take responsibility for our actions…past and future alike…or lack thereof.