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.