Deadlines
Deadlines:  everyone has them--the project for school or work, the dinner you are going to give, the date the bills are due to be paid, the wedding, the baby, the moving date.   Most fill one kind of calendar or another regularly.  Some we look forward to, others just have to be met.  Often we groan as we contemplate how busy we are and all the deadlines we have to meet.
However, there is one deadline only God know for each of us.  This is, of course, the date He has set for your death and for mine.
This has been on my mind because earlier this month, Garry had both an aunt and an uncle (today would have been their 66th wedding anniversary) die within 10 days of each other; then three others not related humanly have passed away more recently--a retired teacher, a woman active with Wycliffe Bible Translators, and a soldier many in our community knew--who, because they had put their faith in the finished work of Christ, entered His presence when they died.
A passage from James became significant to us years ago:  "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit'--yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.  What is your life?  For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.  Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that'" (4:13-15).
As Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians, "So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him.  For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil" (5:9-10).
I have to add this:  Don't be like the rich fool Jesus tells about in Luke 12:13-21 for this is what God told him:  "'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God'" (20-21)