I don’t know about you, but the monotony of working out must be punctuated by music in order for me to do it with regularity. And this morning, I was imbibing on a contemporary country Pandora channel. (Yes, I do like country music. I even have tickets to a Sugarland concert in June!)

A Tim McGraw song entitled, “Live Like You Are Dying” came on and I started listening carefully to the lyrics. Apparently a man was confronted with a health diagnosis that got him to thinking about his own imminent death. He asked someone else who had had a similar experience how he handled it. And he replied:

“I went sky diving. I went rocky mountain climbing. I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu. And I loved deeper, and I spoke sweeter and I gave forgiveness I’ve been denyin’. And he said, someday I hope you get the chance to live like you were dyin’.”

While I do not want such a diagnosis, nor do I want that for those I love and care about. It is an intriguing thought that we all ought to explore a bit. Living like we are dying is first and foremost an acceptance of reality. We are all dying. From the moment of birth our bodies have been deteriorating towards the common experience of death. Short of the Lord’s return, we will all experience it.

And, most of us spend an inordinate amount of time trying to ignore that truth. We obfuscate our lives with adventure, pleasure and the pursuit of success. But stopping all that for a bit and considering life as a gift with built in time limitations might be healthy to do this week.

Years ago, I made a list of ten things I wanted to do before I croaked. (That is what I entitled the list.) So far, I have accomplished five of them. I am actively pursuing three others. That leaves two important goals hanging out there. I am not “pausing” but I am pleased with the accomplishment to date. Goals, especially ones written down and shared do help us focus life.

Do you have such a list?

The 2007 movie by Rob Reiner entitled “Bucket List” addressed this same thought. The characters played by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman were dying and they set out to cross off some amazing things off their list.

There is a web site by that same name (Bucketlist.org) that helps facilitate “jotting down your life’s ambitions and telling the story once they have been accomplished.” You might want to check it out.

So this week, maybe we all ought to consider the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6) and put things in perspective. We ought not to worry about all the standard stuff and clearly acknowledge that “tomorrow will take care of itself.” And instead, let’s live like we are dying!

By His Grace and for His Glory,
Sherry L. Worel