Brian Castelli – With His Heart

If you read through the psalms, you might get the idea that David can’t quite make up his mind. One minute he is full of praise, the next he is lamenting over his sins or his enemies or both. I think there is a clear message there–that God is present, brings joy, and sustains us even when things look really, really, really dark. But that is the subject of another post…

I read Psalm 39 yesterday. I can’t shake what David wrote. It hits very close to home. The psalm reads, in part:

⁴LORD, reveal to me the end of my life
and the number of my days.
Let me know how transitory I am. ⁵ You, indeed, have made my days short in length,
and my life span as nothing in Your sight.
Yes, every mortal man is only a vapor.

Selah

⁶ Certainly, man walks about like a mere shadow.
Indeed, they frantically rush around in vain,
gathering possessions
without knowing who will get them.
⁷ Now, Lord, what do I wait for?
My hope is in You.

When I was younger, I really felt immortal. I didn’t walk around thinking, “Wow. I really am going to live forever!” But I didn’t think about illness, weakness, or death very much. While I was vibrant and strong, while my extended family was relatively young and healthy, I went about my life as if the end wasn’t near. It seemed so far off.

Age is the great equalizer. As my energy has waned, as my health has become less-than-perfect, as family members have died, had surgery, required biopsies, my perspective is beginning to approach David’s. How much time do I have left? Am I ready to face God? Have I accomplished all that I set out to accomplish?

My wife says this is my mid-life crisis talking. She might be right, but I think David’s words in verse 7 apply regardless of time of life. My hope is in Christ. To put my hope in my failing body or fleeting achievements is, pretty clearly, the path of folly.

My daughter told me about a church she wants to visit on September 11th. They are having a guest speaker – a woman who was working in one of the Twin Towers right below where one of the terrorist-controlled planes crashed. Somehow she managed to escape to tell her story. I told my daughter that I thought it sounded like something worth listening to.

The story reminded me of the time I visited one of our local churches to hear the testimony of a man who was leading a squad of 10 soldiers in a HumVee during the Blackhawk Down incident in Somalia. He told me that he was surrounded by hardened Army Rangers – men who could do it all themselves, men who needed no one. But these men’s hearts were softened by the horrors they had witnessed. They wanted to know what had happened to their buddies now that they were dead. Where did they go? What was happening to them now that they had crossed over?

This thread of conversation made me think about the deaths from hurricane Katrina and the horrors we see broadcast on TV every day. So I thought I’d dust off an old, old article that talks about this very subject – what will it be like 5 minutes after we die?

From Moody Monthly, January, 1952

Five Minutes After

It may be a moment, or after months of waiting, but soon I shall stand before my Lord. Then in an instant all things will appear in a new perspective.

Suddenly, the things I thought important – tomorrow’s tasks, the plans for dinner at my church, my success or failure in pleasing those around me – these will not matter at all. And the things to which I gave but little thought – the word about Christ to the man next door, the moment (how short it was) of earnest prayer for the Lord’s work in far-off lands, the confessing and forsaking of that secret sin – will stand as real and enduring.

Five minutes after I’m in heaven I’ll be overwhelmed by the truths I’ve known but somehow never grasped. I’ll realize then that it’s what I am in Christ that comes first with God, and that when I am right with Him, I do the things which please Him.

I’ll sense that it was not just how much I gave that mattered, but how I gave – and how much I withheld.

In heaven I’ll wish with all my heart that I could reclaim a thousandth part of the time I’ve let slip through my fingers, that I could call back those countless conversations which could have glorified my Lord – but didn’t.

Five minutes after I’m in heaven, I believe I’ll wish with all my heart that I had risen more faithfully to read the Word of God and wait on Him in prayer – that I might have known Him while still on earth as He wanted me to know Him.

A thousand thoughts will press upon me, and though overwhelmed by the grace which admits me to my heavenly home, I’ll wonder at my aimless earthly life. I’ll wish… if one may wish in heaven – but it will be too late.

Heaven is real and hell is real, and eternity is but a breath away. Soon we shall be in the presence of the Lord we claim to serve. Why should we live as though salvation were a dream – as though we did not know?

“To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”

There may yet be a little time. A new year dawns before us. God help us to live now in the light of a real tomorrow!