My home in heaven....

Well, today has went in a totally different direction for me in the last few hours. It started with a phone call from a church member, calling to inform us that his mother’s health had just taken a turn for the worse and he wanted to inform the clergy. She had been in hospice, but now she was unresponsive and it is clear her life is coming to a close now. I don’t like hearing about things like this. And it got my mind rolling - with thoughts of death and dying. And who likes to think about that?

I started thinking about older people in my own life who I know won’t be around many more years, and I can’t even bare to think of losing them. A short while after this phone call, I was on facebook.com - something you join where you can create a profile, and you can search for and find old acquaintances, or friends and stuff - and I keep coming across lots of people I knew from college, and suddenly a girl came to my mind - probably because I’m thinking about dying - and I remember this girl who I was kind of close to, who died when she was a sophomore. She was a music major and I was the leader of the Nursing Home ministry at the time, where we went every week and sang hymns with the elderly, and we needed a piano player, and this girl became the one who played the piano, while I led everyone in song. So her and I would get together once a week to go over hymns and kind of ‘practice’ and she was a really sweet girl & a wonderful Christian… and then one night she was driving back to her dorm from babysitting and was hit head-on by a drunk driver and she died the next day. She was only 20 - and that was traumatizing.. It was just ‘too close to home’ for me. I remember sitting in chapel the next day and her picture up on the big screen and having a very long moment of silence for her - and I remember just crying and my friend sitting next to me just hugging me forever, as we sat in the pew.

So now here I am thinking about death and thinking about her, and so I google her name, and find this huge memorial website which I never knew about. So I just spent the last half hour reading account after account about what happened that night - reading details I never even knew before - and it was just overwhelming.

So now that memory is very fresh in my head… and anything about my life that I planned on writing about today, has faded. My thoughts have completely shifted to being so incredibly thankful - for life, for family, for my husband, for my adorable daughters… everything the Lord has blessed me with - and that all could be taken away from me in one breath. Life is short. We cannot assume that we will live to be 85 years old and live a full, wonderful life. We have no idea when the Lord will choose to call us each home. We need to forgive, we need to love, and we need to be ready… for any day could be our last. This might sound depressing - but I really don’t think we think about it enough. We rush around and we get so busy with our lives and our super full social calendars and with ‘having fun’ that we forget what life is really about… and where we are headed. God created us so that we could spend eternity with Him. Our lives here on Earth are temporary - this is NOT our home. Our home is in heaven and we are only on Earth for a short time - a quick visit - before we return to our real home with our Father in heaven. He is waiting for us. Are we ready to greet Him? You don’t know when His arms will open up to embrace you.. forever. So seek Jesus - seek Him wholeheartedly, and ask Him to forgive you of your sins. Ask him to come into your heart & to live inside you and to make you a new person. This is how you will be guaranteed life everlasting…. And you will know that beyond this earthly world you have a better home - a beautiful home - where your Father will embrace you and hold you forever. If you aren’t living your life to glorify Christ & to seek Him and know Him better, you are missing out on SO much and let me tell you, you definitely don’t want to miss out on Heaven. And since you don’t know when He will call you home…. call on Him now. I want to see YOU in heaven my friend! :)

Romans 10:9-10

...If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.