This Is Your Prognosis

"You have two weeks to live."

When that prognosis comes your way, how are you going to act differently? When what we all dread most has come right up to your door step and is knocking and you must open the door; the moments before death greets you, what is it that you will boast about?

There a plenty of songs and movies produced trying to push a "live every day like it's your last" mentality. I can't say I disagree with this premise.

Who were the first people who heard the words, "your dying"? Adam and Eve. God came to them after they had disobeyed him and as punishment, said "For you are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). We don't see much about their response. I imagine they must have been struck with some amount of fear. For what does it look like to not exist in the form we have always existed in? No one really knows.

Interestingly, just a chapter later, the first murder occurs, which couldn't happen if death and sin didn't exist. Personally, I would have assumed that the second sin recorded would have been something like lust or idolatry, but not murder. That seems like such a fast progression.

The very punishment that we are forced by God to endure is used and abused by Cain in chapter 4 of genesis, and still today by many disturbed individuals.

Adam and Eve got their prognosis.

But did Abel get his prognosis? Did someone come up to him and say your going to die today? No. But he knew he was going to die, surely his parents made him aware of this as we are made aware of it today. Abel's death was sudden, unexpected. It couldn't have possibly been prepared for. Could it?

I like to sweep death to the side just as much as the next guy, but the sooner we embrace the facts, the more honest a life we will live. We are going to die.

The difference between you and someone who is told by a doctor that they are going to live only two more weeks is....well, there is no difference. You could die in two weeks just as easily as the next person. Do you wanna live your life for God, or push death to the side, die in ignorance, and regret every step you took in life?

This is your prognosis.

Business And The Modern Day Pharisee

I remember my transition from High-School to college. Ahhh...the glory of no bells that ring, no parents that yell, and all-you-can-eat food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

College seemed significantly easier to me than High-School was and it took me some time to put my finger on why that was. Eventually I came to the realization that College had less "Busy Work." You know? That work intended to keep a classroom full of high-school students busy and free from learning. That work that had no value other than giving the teacher a well-deserved (under most circumstances) break.

Matthew 12:38-39 says, "Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, 'Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.' But he answered them, 'An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah."

This is one of multiple times that the Pharisees get rejected by Jesus when they request signs from him. Why? After-all, Jesus could just show them a sign, that doesn't seem like a whole lot to ask for from the creator of the universe.

Jesus only had so much time.

He wasn't about to waste his time on busy work. The Pharisees were people who had neglected all of his signs thus far and were so caught up in their own "righteousness" that all of the signs he had already produced were completely ignored.

For Jesus, this was "Busy Work."

Life has a way of distracting us; of manipulating us.

You only have so much time.

Do you let life distract you? Are you caught up in your job, or your next big success? So caught up that your next step forward in your relationship with God has been set on the back-burner?

We are foolish people. We invest our lives in little successes here and there to only find ourselves damned to hell at the end of our life. Is it worth it to you? If it is, then continue in your way, find yourself not dedicating your life to God, not investing your life in other people, not resting in the easy arms of Jesus.

For you, this is "Busy Work."

The person who invests there life in success; in busy work, is the finest of pharisees.

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves."

Are you busy?