Saturday, April 13, 2013

Time Well Spent

Today I woke up with the urgent pressure in my chest that I had one less day to live. Another precious day in my life, spent; another night, past. I quickly dressed in my Panera uniform and carried my laptop down to my car and warmed up the engine. Cold, dark streets of a city still fast asleep, and my shift at Brixton Square was about to begin. Today would probably not be my last day, but it could be.

It wasn't that long ago that I read Regine's Book. Subtitled A Teen Girl's Last Words, the latest press release on the young adult nonfiction shelf at Barnes and Noble captivated me from title to conclusion. Regine was only 17 when she passed away from cancer, last year in Norway. The book was the published version of her blog, the blog she started when she was first diagnosed at 16 years old. In the book she traces the journey towards the end of her life, one agonizing day at a time, until she passes away. According to the words of her own testimony, she was an atheist who rejected God and religion and passed from life into an eternity in hell. "The fear of never existing is always with me," she wrote so poignantly.

Her blog-turned-book helped refocus my ambitions. Someday, the rapture forbidding, I will no longer have another day to live away. This thought has been with me as I interacted with my customers, fellowshipped with my colleagues, and later drove home. If today was really the last day, would it have been spent well?
The weather today was so nice, the sun so peaceful and breeze so lulling, I carried my growth journal and Bible out to the gazebo on campus to do my devotions. "Put me in remembrance," read the verse in Isaiah, speaking of God himself. As I walk in the light that God has put upon my path, I feel that every day I keep God at the center is a day lived well. He is kind, helpful, gentle, honest, forgiving and... hopeful. I may not know the end of my path, and every step that will fall between now and that end, but today's life is a gift of hope from God.

If we were to live today as if it was the very last chance we'd ever have to be here, I can only imagine the warmth, encouragement, and filial love that would unite our lives. Perhaps the same kind of atmosphere that will meet us one day in heaven.

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