I don't know how many times I have thought about what I would do if I were told I only had a short time to live.

In the course of life we think about what we would do in our last days, hours, moments.

Spend loads of money, take an exotic trip, buy a fancy sports car, repair broken relationships, speak words of forgiveness, love, and encouragement to the ones we love. There are so many things that come to mind.

And then one day I realized that each day gone was one we did not have.

We are dying from the time we draw breath from our mother's womb. We don't think about death much in our culture unless we come face to face with it and loose a friend or a loved one.
But death is a part of living.

It is something that is happening to all of us, whether slowly or quickly, we are all dying. No matter how many years we are afforded on the earth our bodies are deteriorating before our eyes.
If we live long enough we will be the old lady shuffling slowly in the grocery aisle slowing us down or the old man holding up traffic as he tries to park his car.

As a culture we have tried to separate ourselves from the unpleasantness of old age and death. By placing our elderly in nursing homes or 'assisted living' centers we don't have to take care of, or see, the deterioration of age unless we decide we want to.

And, while years ago families not only nursed their elderly until death, they also dressed and prepared the body for burial. That task we have also rid ourselves of by using funeral homes to prepare our dead and host our wakes.

We don't like to think of death.

But, in it's proper place, death has great impact upon our thinking and upon how we live our lives. If we are faced daily with the fact that we are aging, and in fact dying, we may behave differently. Instead of losing our temper because the old lady on the road in front of us slowed us down we might better be able to realize that if God gives us the life we so desire that we will someday be that old person.

There is nothing so sad as an old person plagued by regrets. Someone who feels that their life was miserable. It is as if they are a victim of their own minds.

God has been doing a new work in my heart and this is just a piece of it. Just a few thoughts that I have been ruminating upon. I don't want to have regrets someday of not spending time with people I love or doing things that I have dreamed of.

Of not laughing, traveling, eating, singing, loving.

So, if you started each new day you were given with the thought that it may be your last, because we aren't promised a tomorrow,  how would you live differently?