Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. 1 Corinthians 9:24
Cemeteries have long been considered creepy, especially at night. I don’t know how someone could live next to a cemetery. I certainly don’t think I could do it. It’s not that I feel like someone is going to come out of the grave or anything like that, but I guess it’s that death is such a morbid thing. It seems as if you would always wake up in the middle of the night with the eerie feeling that something is going on over there. In the daytime, I am fine with cemeteries, and I actually enjoy walking through them and looking at what is written on the tombstones, especially the old ones.
One thing that I have noticed on every single tombstone, whether it is an ornately hewn slab of marble or a roughly chiseled rock, is they all have a birth date and a death date with a little dash in between. That little dash is our race through life. Everything that the person lying beneath the cold stone ever did is wrapped up in that little dash. The stark reality is that we all get only one dash through life. We don’t get any restarts or do-overs. Once our birth date announces the start of our race through life, we only have one chance to make our life count for Jesus before the stone masons come and chisel in the death date. Life is fragile and precious, and we only get one.
Some dashes are longer than others, and you can never know when your dash is about to end. How will you fill your dash? Don’t waste it on things that will not count for eternity. Perhaps we should strive to live the words of the songwriter who wrote:
I want my life to count for Jesus,
All earthly things will quickly fade.
No need to add to worldly riches,
I only seek eternal gain.
Let’s start today to fill the dash between our dates with as many things for Jesus Christ as we can.
Read also: Hebrews 12:1-4
Quote of the day: “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”