MORTALITY'S INEVITABLE MARCH

Saturday, January 19, 2008

My first “real” taste of death came when I was eleven years old and my mother died. However, I never really dwelled on death. I preached my first funeral when I was a junior in college at Abilene Christian. Over the next fifty years and with four different churches I preached hundreds of funerals. But it has only been since I reached my seventies that I have spent much time thinking about my own death. But it is coming. The Bible says so (Hebrews 9:27).

Mickey Mantle always expected to die young. When he turned 60, he commented, “If I had known I was going to live so long, I’d have taken better care of myself.”

“If you live to be 100, you’ve got it made. Very few people die past that age.” George Burns (who lived to be 100 and died).

The Apostle Paul said, “We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” (2 Cor. 4:16).