There is a man in my church who has been recently diagnosed and is currently undergoing treatment for leukemia.  Even with treatment, the doctors give him just over a year to live.  I saw him yesterday after church and stopped to inquire about his health.  After he updated me on the status of various tests and procedures, I asked him this question:   “With eternity looming before you as a near reality, what has become the most important thing in life?”  Here is his response:

“I was saved when I was eight years old; that was 55 years ago.  20 years ago I moved to this city to go to Bible college.  And then I just settled in to life.  I pretty much lived the American dream.  I have a nice house, a couple of nice cars and a savings account.  And none of that means anything to me now.  I have wasted my life.  The only thing that matters is what I can do for the Lord Jesus with the time I have left.”

It makes me mindful that life is just a vapor for all of us and we will stand before the Lord Jesus and look into that glorious face.   So much of what we currently think of as important will not matter at all on that day.

I pray that the Lord would help us all, His people, to wake up to what really matters……eternal things…..those things that bring the Lord Jesus glory in this earth and make Him known.  The American dream is a tranquilizer that has numbed us to the fact that we are strangers and pilgrims on this earth.  We are citizens of another country….a heavenly one.  And unless we awake to this fact, we may all find that we have lived wasted lives.