Today is Friday, May 4th, 2012; Karen's Korner #2310
We received this forwarded email devotional yesterday from childhood school friend Cindy Schubert. She liked it and so do I.
It makes me think of a broadcast I heard this week when I was driving to and from town. I enjoy listening to our local Christian radio station as I travel, but rarely can recall to which program I was listening.
The illustration this particular broadcast was telling about was a recent conference he was attending. The speaker had sticky notes which he was putting on everything as he was walking around. The note had only one word: "temporary". Temporary was everywhere!
We are becoming more and more aware after devastating tornadoes, tsunamis, or hurricanes, that many things which may have stood the test of time, can be destroyed in almost an instant: temporary.
But the same speaker had another colored note, containing another word: "permanent", which he stuck on conference goers who chose the note. "Had they accepted Jesus' offer of eternal life?" "Do they allow His blood, shed on the cross generations ago, to cover their sins?"
If so, their (our) lives are PERMANENT!
Reflection
"Did you hear that the richest man in town has died?"
"How much did he leave behind?"
"Everything."
Have you visited some of our historic and beautiful cemeteries in Chicago--Graceland, Rosehill, Oak Woods? Although you notice an occasional familiar name in Chicago history--McCormick, Pullman, Field--most of the names are not recognizable. Impressive
monuments, but forgotten names, forgotten lives.
Death equalizes all of humanity, rich and poor, the famous and the unknown. As Psalm 49 puts it, "Don't be overly impressed when someone becomes rich . . .because when they die, they won't take any of it with them." Jesus frequently takes up the theme,
pointing out that "one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." He tells the tragic story of a man who labored to store up riches and to whom God says, "You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things that you have prepared, whose will they be?"
Last month's commemoration of the Titanic disaster reminds us, as it did the public 100 years ago, that all strata of society, the powerful and lowly, together face the unpredictability of life and the inevitability of death.
And the question is left for each of us to answer: How then should we live?
Prayer:
Lord of all life, help me to live this day in gratitude, and teach me to distinguish
wisely between enough and more.
Amen.
~ Written by Thomas C. Rook
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