If Tomorrow Never Comes

If Tomorrow Never Comes

As I write this, it is 11:55 PM and I am on the brink of another tomorrow, but then I could have a massive MI and be gone before the new day. No next minute is guaranteed. Garth Brooks sang a song that spoke to the issue of our mortality. The lyrics ponder if the singer made sure that his wife was sufficiently aware of his love for her and if he had prepared her to live without him.

Death is one subject no one really wants to talk about. We always live as if it happens to everyone else, but IF it happens to us it will be happen many, many years from now. I remember one of my mother’s friends brag that he would live to be a hundred. He made it to fifty. I am now fifty and my father was killed at twenty-nine and my mother made it to just past her fifty-fifth birthday. At 46, I had a MI and have 4 stents. A visiting speaker at our jail ministry told the prisoners that he was 65 and that he expected to drop dead any day. When one considers the Bible’s reckoning of threescore and ten or fourscore if by reason of strength lifespan then he is fairly close to the end and I am right behind him.

I see that the clock has gone to 12:03 AM so I made it into that tomorrow, which is now today so tomorrow still may not come and if it does there will be a day when it does not. What will I have to show for my life? When will men say about me? Who will truly mourn my passing besides my immediate family? What will God say when I stand before Him? Will His evaluation of my life be greatly different than my own or other men’s estimation? While some may praise my achievements, other will curse my failings and God will judge both. Praise Him that they will be judged in relation to my acceptance in Jesus by His mercy in saving me and not as a man with no Savior. Still, it will be a somber time and a sad time and quite likely a time of great loss and tears.

We live for such fleeting things and waste our time on things that are destroyed while we are still here, left behind when we go or will be destroyed when He comes. I am in the preparing heavily for retirement mode though I may never retire.

Luke 12:16-21

16 And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully:

17 And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?

18 And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.

19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.

20 But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?

21 So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. (KJV)

This lad had a great retirement program. He had assets somewhat like Howard Hughes who left them behind and Bill Gates who will leave them behind. He was all set to enjoy that program and then he was gone. Most likely someone inherited his riches and squandered them away in no time because they did not earn or understand the value of what they possessed. No wonder some wear the hat that says they are spending their children’s inheritance.

I remember the lad that witnessed to me used this verse because I was the epicurean heathen that was living verse 19 though I had not amassed any wealth. I still followed the lifestyle. When I found it by using the concordance he was teaching me to use I rejoiced until he showed me verse 20. Can we even imagine the tragedy of being so wealthy among men and then appearing in tattered beggar garments or naked before a thrice-holy God? Those who lost all in the crash of 1929 or the .com disaster did not experience near the lifestyle change and despair that this man experienced. Yet, we continue to live like him even if we are saved.

Rev 18:11-15

11 And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:

12 The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble,