Heading out to the airport last Saturday, a friend stopped
by my desk, put her arms around me and said, “I’d better give you a hug in case
I don’t make it back.”
She said it lightly but not frivolously. We’ve both watched
a number of people slip into eternity in the last 12 months: her health-conscious
forty-something dentist from a sudden stroke; a small businessman I used to say
hello to every week unexpectedly diagnosed with a brain tumor; a friend’s mother whose
passing was medically predictable but still jarred family and friends; and a
fellow employee with some kind of wasting disease that remained undiagnosed
until it was too late. There are probably more; those are just the recent ones.
Then there was the near-fatal allergic reaction last time my friend ate an in-flight meal ...
Then there was the near-fatal allergic reaction last time my friend ate an in-flight meal ...
But here’s a disturbing thought — or perhaps not so
disturbing, depending on your relationship to my heavenly Father: one day she’ll
be right. One day she won’t make it back. Or she’ll come back to find I’m no
longer on the planet.
It’s a day that’s coming for every one of us.
“Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days,”
reads the New Living Translation of Ephesians 5:16.
That’s a solid piece of advice to take with me today.
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