If today was your last day
My best friend gave me the best advice He said each day’s a gift and not a given right
You might have heard Nickelback’s latest song, ‘If today was your last day’. Personally I am quite a fan. It is all about what you would do if you knew you wouldn’t have another chance at things and tomorrow was too late – would you make your mark, would you call old friends, would you forgive your enemies? And in the video it has these guys doing random kind deeds, making up with their ex, calling long lost friends. Search it on youtube if you haven’t seen/heard it. And while they aren’t a Christian band, and it isn’t a Christian song, it raises some points that are especially relevant for us, as we know that Jesus is coming back at some point, and at that point, tomorrow will be too late.
So often we spend time on trivial things. And there is nothing wrong with doing stuff like watching TV or playing on your X-Box. But the question is, if you knew today was your last day, that Jesus would be returning tomorrow, would getting to the next level of Gears of War still be your priority? It’s all very well saying you’ve got your whole life ahead of you to serve God when you are older and more spiritually mature, but the thing is, the Bible isn’t too keen on that sort of attitude. God is more interested in you serving Him in the here and now rather than waiting til you feel better equipped. Because there is a saying that God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called. And when Jesus commissioned the disciples, he said simply “Go.” He didn’t say wait until you feel ready, He didn’t say wait until you are older, He simply said “Go.” A present tense command for the here and now, not some point in the future.
In James 4 we are explicitly warned not to fall into the trap of making all sorts of plans for the future, and rather to live in the present, for we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. “How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that” ” (James 4:14)
Life is short. Tomorrow may be too late – we don’t know what the future holds. So surely we should be aiming to live in such a way that if today was our last day we wouldn’t spend eternity regretting not helping that guy, or not telling that girl about Jesus.
In verse 17 James warns us that “it is a sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.” Looking around, it should be easy to see that there are people in need of God’s love. And we have been called to show His love to the world. That is what we ought to do, to not do so is, in the words of James, sin. And tomorrow may be too late, so it is time to start making the most of every opportunity that we get to serve God and point people to Him.