James 4:13-14

“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.”

Of the 2,996 people who died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11, all but 19 of them thought it was going to be just another day. They woke up, got ready for the day ahead of them, and went about their business. They were thinking about where they needed to go and what they needed to do. By 10:30am EST, all of them were dead.

The overwhelming majority of us take each day for granted. We live without considering that each day might be our last. We presume to have “all the time in the world” while the Scriptures teach us to number our days (Ps 90:12). A popular slogan says that you should “live every day as if it were your last,” but I don’t think that’s really practical. What IS practical, and what IS a good application of this passage, is to live every day with the awareness that life is frail…time is short…and death is certain.

My dad gave me a “round to it” coin years ago to remind me to not make a lifestyle of saying, “I’ll get around to it.” Spending time with my family; Hugging my kids and telling them I love them and that I’m proud of them; Sharing with my wife how much she means to me and taking the time to go on a date with her; Sharing my faith with the people I care about the most; Reconciling broken relationships; Leading my wife and children into a deeper relationship with the Lord.

Our time here is short, and for some of us, it will be much shorter than we expect. Do today what you should not put off until tomorrow. Do today what you wish you had done if tomorrow never comes.