When it all "hits the fan"

My wife loves working at the Roseville Health and Wellness Center. She's been there for about 3 years and has gained a great reputation there as the best personal (and athletic!) trainer in the area - she even got on the cover of "Style" magazine for being the best trainer around! Needless to say I'm very proud and very thankful to God for such a consistent job for Noelle that she loves and that helps us financially. The gym is a great place - it's friendly, it's clean, and there is a real strong sense of community there among members and employees. It seems like there's constantly some sort of team competition going on to see who can lose the most weight as a team, or the most body fat, or get a better heart rate, and so on. So when Roger, the beloved front desk man who works the early shift, died at the gym yesterday while exercising, it feels like everything (I'll avoid using the typical first word of the term) "hit the fan".

Roger was a believer in Jesus and for that we thank God. He was exercising after getting off work, and at that time of day it is extremely slow in the gym. Noelle had been leading a class in a room where music was playing and the blinds were shut, so she knew nothing until she got out and medics were trying to revive him. Apparently he died while doing routine exercises and was a man of good health with no apparent issues (he was in his 60's I believe).

All of this has got me and many others thinking about the reality of death. There is a pastor I really like listening to named Matt Chandler who is in his mid 30's and found out he has an aggressive form of brain cancer of which it is unlikely he lives even 5 more years. Click on this link to be taken to his sermon archive - I think you'll know why I like him so much after just one sermon. Anyways, the point in bringing him up right next to this story about Roger is that we have NO IDEA how long we have to live. All of us have an expiration date on our lives and we don't know when it is. Sometimes people like Chandler get a bit of a warning, and many others have no clue such as Roger and the hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti. It is a somber thought and this is a somber entry to my blog. But it is worth thinking about as Christians in terms of the Gospel and the time God gives us on earth.

Now, this could easily turn into a "do more for Jesus" thing, convincing you have ought to be doing more since you don't know how long you have. But if that's what it becomes then we've missed the boat. Having no idea how long we have to live should perhaps lead us to take action on some things we're putting off, acting as if we have X amount of years remaining. But what I believe it out to do is fill our hearts with gratitude for each day God gives us because we don't know when he is going to bring us Home to himself. I need to spend each morning praising God that he woke me up (no the alarm did not wake you up this morning, God did!) and gave me another day - a day which I am neither deserving of nor guaranteed that I will make it to the end. And each night (and in the middle of the day of course) I need to praise him again for a completed day, for the rest he gives me each night, and continually repent of the many ways in which I still rebel in sin against him and seek his grace.

This may be a bit of a ramble for me, but it was about time I wrote something :-)