The other day I crossed out an appointment that I wrote on my daily planner dated Friday, May 9.  It was to be a visit with Oom Kiat.  On Monday, April 28, he already moved to his eternal home in Heaven.

He had longed for Heaven so much that he had been waiting for this homecoming for quite some time.  He wanted to be with Jesus Our Lord and his beloved Tante Gwie, whom God called nearly three years ago.  Every time we visited him, he talked about how grateful he was to his daughter and son-in-law for taking care of him, and how he wished to go home.  Now he’s home.  Adieu so lange, Oom.

We all have our timetable, which includes when we should die.  Of course we do not have the exact date, but we know around when or what age we should leave this world.  Some guessed it right, but I think, most guessed it wrong; we ended up departing too early or too late.  The danger of guessing or having this timetable is we end up waiting for our time to go.  I don’t think that is what God wants; I think what He wants is for us to live each day to the fullest.  Jesus says, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

In the Message, Eugene H. Peterson renders it, “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”  I like that.  Focus on today, on what is happening now, on what we should do and be, and on what God is doing.  Sure, we still must be ready, but ready does not mean being anxious about “what may or may not happen tomorrow.”  Being ready means, we trust that God who’s with us today will be with us tomorrow.  If He decides to take us home tomorrow, we won’t have any regret because we’ve lived today.  It is by living today, we won’t have any regret tomorrow.

Pastor Paul