Our Days are Numbered

Our days are numbered before we are born. And just as one hair of our head doesn't fall to the ground unnoticed by our God, neither does one day pass without His sustaining us. But eventually, for each of us there is that day, when God calls us Home. For the one going Home, it is as if life has just begun. Paradoxically, for us that remain, it is as if our life has just ended. Our hearts are torn apart by our enemy death. Life as we have known it has suddenly taken a new, unwelcomed direction.

Death is hard to understand. When faced with death, our souls scream out that it is not right. We are made for living, not for dying. Recently a friend with four children died of cancer at the age of 37 years. My mind races with all kinds of questions: who will take care of the children when they are sick, who will listen to the stories of their day, who will cook their dinner? But God deemed it good for her to go Home. Her days were numbered.

Within a couple of days of her death, I learn of another's friend whose granddaughter is killed in an auto accident; she is 16. Surely, there are many more things for her to learn, ways to serve God, life to be experienced. But God deemed it good for her to go Home. Her days, too, were numbered - just as they are for each of us.

I have to fight the notion within myself that these women's lives were cut short. It looks to me as if they had so much living ahead of them. But this is not God's perspective. Just as one hair doesn't fall to the ground unnoticed by Him, neither does one saint die without His knowing. Even in death, God is about His good purposes; He is accomplishing His plans. Through the pain of death, we can also rejoice – for one of those purposes is to abolish death!