Not long-ago Haller Funeral Home called me and another to pick up a body that recently passed away. I was on a two-man team, the lesser experienced of the two. It was a melancholy situation. There on the bank of the creek lay an 18-year-old young man. Was it an accident? I heard his grandmother say, to another, he was having a party with his friends, and alcohol was involved. I heard the coroner say that he needed to be taken to Montgomery County for an autopsy, because it appeared there was physical evidence of a struggle. We picked up the once-living young man and left the scene.

Melancholy. It gets one to think (it did me) for what purpose did his life serve? In Ecclesiastes 7, the preacher (Solomon) said one needs to go to the house of mourning in order for the end of life to be imprinted upon those still living. For what reason is this needed? So many try to avoid “end-of-life” issues because of the morbid nature of it all. the Holy Spirit, through Solomon, said this was not wise. For one to go to the house of mourning, it helps to teach that we all will end of up at the funeral home. To make an imprint on the living, let us see those who have died laying still in a coffin.

The stupidity of people, myself included at one time in my life, is remarkable. “Nothing is going to happen to me! Quit your worrying! I will see you tomorrow!” Tomorrow never comes. In my life, as I reflect on it now, I have been but a few times, maybe only twice, on the cusp of death. As I think about it, I can’t help but to thank the Lord for His mercy. For on the cusp of death, I was not prepared. There are a host of people unprepared to meet the Lord. Unprepared because they don’t know the Lord, that is they have not obeyed the holy will of God. They are unprepared because they don’t know the Lord, that is, they don’t take time to read and understand His will for their individual lives. Unprepared, because if there is something that is “known” it is information or knowledge that came from another and is not one’s own. Unprepared! I was once there. No more. I took seriously my responsibility to the Lord, knowing that before Him I will stand one day, judged by the things the Lord did say.

I had better come to know them (John 12:48; 2 Cor. 5:10). I was once stupid because of ignorance. If I am stupid any longer, it will be the result of neglect. Paul wrote, For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad (ASV).

The “good” and the “bad” are not measured by how the individual identifies or determines what is good or bad. The good is the initial response one makes to die with Jesus. More than that, the good is the life one lives with Jesus. Again, from Paul, I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me (Gal. 2:20).  

What is the bad? The bad is when one tries to live life not following the good mentioned above.

Who of us have not been engaged in frivolity and senseless pleasures, and now look on those things as a time of vanity?