Inspiration for the Day

Sooner or Later Everyone Runs Out of Time

Much sooner than you can anticipate, you will be the silent guest at your own funeral. No doubt there will be relatives and friends present to mourn for you whom you haven’t seen in years. After the preacher delivers a message in your memory, you will be taken to the graveyard, given a final farewell and buried.

The retirement that you spent your life working for will be gone forever. Remember the new car that you worried about scratching? Its new owner just wrecked it! The newlyweds bought your house and have redecorated the room that you had at last decorated to your liking. Your personal belongings have been sorted and some discarded. The dog is making a bed out of your favorite old coat. Other clothes of yours that no one could wear or did not want have been boxed and given to Goodwill. Your personal treasures that were valuable only to you—the carefully preserved flower, the lock of hair, the torn picture, the stained postcard—have been burned as trash.

You attended a number of funerals in your lifetime, but for some reason you just never expected to be lying in the casket yourself. Sure, someday, but not that particular day. “Maybe tomorrow,” you always thought, “but not today.” You remember telling the Lord each time you thought your time was close, “Not this time, Lord. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.”

Sooner or later, everyone runs out of time. Paul states that everyone has an appointment with death and then the judgment (Heb. 9:27). The only time that you can decide whether or not your death will be a blessing is today while you are alive. Today is the day of salvation (2Cor. 6:2). Today is the day to do the Lord’s work. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all of your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working, nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom” (Eccl. 9:10).

Sooner or later, everyone runs out of time but no one runs out of eternity. Doesn’t it make more sense to spend your time preparing for that which will not end, rather than squandering your time trying to hold on to that which will not last?

“Careless soul, O heed the warning,
For your life will soon be gone;
O how sad to face the judgment
Unprepared to meet thy God.”
Will you be prepared on the day that you run out of time?