OUCH!!!

I was sitting with a prominent lawyer some time ago in a life journey coaching session. At the beginning of the session I gave my friend a blank piece of paper and asked him to draw on it a tombstone. Then I instructed him to write his name at the top just as it might appear at his death. To continue with this morbid thinking, I asked him to put his birth date on the bottom of the tombstone and the date of his death as the day following our meeting. 

All this was to make the point of my final instruction to him. “Now, put in the middle what you think the people closest to you will remember you for.” His immediate response was, “Ouch!”

How about you? What would your tombstone say if you were to die tomorrow?

The Psalmist assures us that “You have made my days a few handbreaths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Surely a man goes about as a shadow!” (Psalm 39:5-6a)

Scripture repeatedly declares to us that life here on earth is short. Life here on earth is not what life is all about. Life is about eternity. Here is merely preparation for there. If we live as if it is all about here we miss the rewards intended for us there.

The Psalmist continues in the second part of verse 39:6, “Man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather.” One thing for sure – we will not take it with us.

Yet, there is another thing we can know for sure – we can send it on ahead of us. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth … but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven … for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-22)

How do we lay up treasures in heaven? Where is this First National Bank of Heaven? Why there are branches all around us.

Why I should I hold more than I need to live a modest life for a short time here on earth? Why should I not be a wise investor in the Kingdom of Heaven?

As you pray today, ask God, ‘In which branch of the First National Bank of Heaven do You want me to invest?” Be careful … He will answer your prayer!
 
Nolen Rollins