Good Tuesday morning! The tradition of giving out Christmas cards has been revived. At least I hope the pile of cards in my front seat that I worked on for 3 hours or more yesterday is proof that the tradition has been brought back. Whew! Talk about a labor of love! If you aren't on my Christmas card list...it's cuz I don't have your address! The funny thing about this little tradition of mine is that I thought that I had only skipped a year or two for college. The date on my spreadsheet? December 2004. Yikes, that's like, um, five years ago! I must be getting old to lose five years like that. :-) That's bad news for those of you who can claim more years in this world than I can. Of course, we don't call it "getting old" anymore; we call it "closer to Jesus." Doesn't that sound a bit more respectful?
The world likes to use some things as put downs. People might hate to get old these days, but surely we won't object to getting closer to Jesus! I could say that an elder is really old, or I could say that person is getting really close to Jesus. In the church, our elders aren't a bunch of old fogeys, but are a group of leaders closer to Jesus than we are. That young pastor is not as close to Jesus as I am... oops! Okay, so using one in place of the other doesn't really work for us. In truth, we don't know which of us is closer to Jesus if you use it in place of the date God has set for each of us to go home. Also, if a person accepts Jesus as Lord, then Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to dwell in that person's heart; ya can't get much closer than that! All of us who believe in Jesus are close to Him, no matter how many human years we have lived on this earth.
The date when we will go home to be with Jesus? We don't know it and God won't tell us ahead of time. The Bible tells us that it could be today or tonight when we are called home. At the same time you or I might be here for another 300 years until our mission to this world is finished. At a young age, we might have thought that living for 300 and some years would be pretty cool. As we get older and the years weigh more heavily upon us, we tend to think that might be just a bit of a curse. Our time here is limited, and thank God for that! This life is a difficult journey, and we now realize that we need God's strength and encouragement to get through the road laid out for us.
Now we look forward to meeting Jesus at just the right time. Of course we don't want to leave our loved ones behind, but at the same time we do not want to hold each other back from going to our heavenly home. No, I don't have a premonition of death this morning. I simply find it much easier to write about death when the life of Jesus lives in my heart! That may be the second step toward losing all fear; the first being to believe in Jesus!
Have a wonderful new day in Christ!
Bucky
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