If Today Was Your Last Day...

“It’s not length of life, but depth of life.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

　

What if you knew for certain that today was your last day to live? If you knew that after today there would be no more tomorrows, would that change how you would live out this day? Well, as it is, no one knows for sure when they’ll die.

Sometimes I wonder to myself what it’ll be like when I die, not for myself, but for others. As weird as this may sound, I sometimes wish that I’ll be able to go to my own funeral. I wonder how people will talk about me after I’m dead. Will they say good things? When a man see’s his end, he wants to know there was some purpose to his life. How will the world speak my name in the years to come?

I think we all hope that only good things will be said. I think we want people to acknowledge the things we strived for in life. For example, if your goal in life was to build a successful business empire, and you did succeed, you would want people to acknowledge your accomplishment. Or if you strove to be a billionaire, you would want people to acknowledge your wealth. We want to be acknowledged for things that were important to us if life, and that we dedicated our time and resources to.

I’m sure you can think of something that you strive for, and hope people will be able to recognize it in you, in life and in death. For me personally, I strive to touch peoples lives with my own. I pray that I can be as much of a blessing to them as they are to me. I pray that through my love to others, the love of God may shine through me and touch someone’s heart. If I reached the end of my life and was able to touch even just ONE person’s life, because I strove toward my goal, even when it seemed the most difficult thing I could ever do, I would feel reassured that my life meant something, and that my efforts weren’t for nothing.

People are very important to me. God created every single person on this earth, even the ones we don’t like so much, for a purpose. He obviously thinks they are important to His plans, or else they never would have been created. No person is more important than the other. A lot of times I’ll see a person, maybe covered with tattoos and piercings, or they just kind of look like they’re messed up, and I will think to myself, “There is no hope for that person.” But what a horrible thing for me to think for several reasons: #1 Who am I to judge? I could have easily been in the same shoes as that person. #2 That is not a thought that should ever enter a Christians mind, because we were ALL lost in sin at one point in our lives. #3 “They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.” Matthew 9:12

Sometimes this goal that I strive toward is very difficult for me, because it is so much easier to judge and be cruel to those that I don’t think are worth my time, rather than to view them as lost souls that Jesus Christ died to save. He did not think that they were too lost to be saved, so why should I? I often find myself wondering whether or not my time is wasted on certain people, but I must then remind myself that Christ died for the WHOLE world. Now mind you, not everyone of them will choose to accept His great gift, BUT it is not for me to judge the ones who will or will not. It is my Christian duty to show EVERY person in my life the love of God, whether it be by praying for them or reaching out to them in some way. This is the goal that I strive toward being successful at in life. This is what I pray people will see in me now, and even after I am long gone, God’s love reflected through me.

I now return to my earlier question: if today was your last day, would you live it differently? And if so, how? If today were my last day, I probably wouldn’t have wasted away my morning in bed sleeping. I probably wouldn’t have been so concerned with checking my face book for updates and messages. I probably would have set aside all fears of persecution and boldly proclaimed Jesus Christ to the lost. I probably would have taken the time to make sure that my loved ones knew how much they truly meant to me. I probably would take the time to make sure I made amends with someone that I held a bitter grudge against. I would make sure that I forgave those who had done me wrong. And I probably would strive even harder toward my goal.

It’s not to late you know? Why don’t we live the rest of this day as if it were our last? And not just today, but everyday for the rest of the short time that we have here on earth. Let’s live each day as if it were the most important day of our life, because what we do in life echoes in eternity! Life is too short to even waste away even just one day of it! Live today as if it were your last!