Lessons from the Heart
Expiration date
By Pastor Scott Gamel

Gamel

The magazine section of a recent Saturday newspaper included a fascinating article on life expectancy, and included a link to www.livingto100.com. On the website, I completed a "life expectancy calculator." It asked questions about diet and exercise... home life and family... job related stress... personal hygiene (you can add up to fours years to your life by flossing your teeth everyday!)... family medical history, etc. The calculator used this information to determine how much longer I could expect to live.

I was "okay" with my result, at first. It is older than the current ages of my parents, and longer than any of my grandparents lived. It did upset me a little that my wife will apparently outlive me by several years.

But then I started thinking... About how old my children will be at the "check out date" I was given... About things I want to see and do with my wife when we retire... About ministry and mission work I'd love to be involved in.

Suddenly, my expiration date seems to come way too soon.

Because we have no guarantees of how long we will live, our focus should be on how we live. In the Scriptures there are a handful of verses from Exodus and Deuteronomy that promised long life to the Children of Israel if they kept the Law. Apart from that, the thrust of the Bible message on age and length of life is focused on quality, not quantity. How would we live if we could know when our "number" was coming up? I suspect I would try to make each day count. I'd make sure my wife could never doubt how much I love her, need her, and support her. I'd spare no effort to make sure my children were well prepared to face life with a foundation of faith. I would be serious about sharing the Gospel with the lost, befriending the lonely, and offering hope to the hurting.

I guess I've had the sobering realization that I won't live on this earth forever, and that most encounters with other people are more significant than we know. I want to really live, and not just mark time on a calendar. I want to spend my remaining days on this planet - however many or few there might be - in such a way that "eternal life" will be nothing more than a change of venue.

Now, I gotta go floss... Scott Gamel is pastor at Jubilee Fellowship, Flora.