Live Like You Were Dying

By John Stallings


For what is your life? It is even a vapour that appeareth for a little time & then vanisheth away. James 4:14

I like a good country love song now & again. A while back Tim McGraw had a hit with a song called “Live like you were dying.” The words are;

In my early forties, with a lot of life before me A moment came that stopped me on a dime.

I spent most of the next days, looking at the x-raysTalking about the options taking my sweet time.

I asked him when it sank in, if this might be the real end, How’s it hit-ya to get that kind of news,

Man what’d you do -he said,

I went sky diving, I went mountain climbing, I went two-point seven seconds on a bull named FuManChu,

And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter, And I gave forgiveness I’d been denying,

Someday I hope you get the chance, To live like you were dying.

He said I was finally the husband that most the time I wasn’t,I became a friend- a friend would like to have,

And all a sudden going fishing wasn’t such an imposition, And I went three times the year I lost my dad. I finally read the good book, & I took a long hard look. At what I’d do if I could do it all again.

To me this is a sermon-in-song because knowingly or unknowingly the writer is expressing the Biblical principle that James writes about in James 4:13-17.

He tells us that our lives are but a vapor & that our time on earth is very short.David also told us we should number our days (Psalm 90:10, 12.) The song makes the statement, “Some day I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying.”

How would our lives be different if we lived with a sense of our own mortality? Let’s look at the song & consider a few of its valuable insights;

LOVE DEEPER & SPEAK SWEETER.

Sometimes words can be so cruel that they can put someone in the “Spiritual burn unit.” O the hurt that can come from an unbridled tongue.

Some time back Juda & I had dinner in the home of my eldest daughter whose husband was blinded several years ago in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. Everyone was contributing to the fat-chewing & as the evening was winding down, & faithful to my raconteur reputation, I told a “funny” story about a blind man & his dog. Everyone laughed & seemed to like the story. Knowing this young man from his published writings as well as spending time with him, I knew he’d be O.K with the story. On the way home I got to thinking about the story I told & started feeling bad about it.

I didn’t rest very well that night & the first thing the next morning I sent my daughter an email apologizing for the story. My daughter assured me her husband wasn’t sensitive about things like that & of course I felt better, but still I wasn’t off the hook in my spirit.No person, no matter how understanding they are, wants to hear jokes about their disability & no person with any sensitivity should tell a story no matter how funny it might “seem to be” if it makes another person the butt of the joke. I usually have a very good filter in front of my brain that stops me from saying things that aren’t wise but I just happened to override it & told the story anyway.

Though everything’s cool with my new son-in-law, & I’ve forgiven myself, I will still feel bad about the incident until it fades a little more & I think that’s as it should be. Even at my age (I prefer not to say especially at my age) we keep learning to “check ourselves before we wreck ourselves.”

The mind works like a computer & stores things according to subjects. That’s why when dog stories are being told, your mind will race up & down it’s files & ransack them until something you’ve got stored about dogs pops up. That’s why so many dog stories get told at one get-together. The same is true about subjects like cancer, heart attacks, arthritis, diabetes, overweight people etc. If you go to visit someone in the hospital who has cancer you need to be on guard because if you’ve ever known someone who died of cancer that stories coming out unless you’re very careful. If you let it out you’ll kick yourself indefinitely.

In Romans 12:8 the Bible speaks of “mercy with cheerfulness.” When we seek to show mercy we must be certain it’s tempered with cheerfulness.Tim’s song also says;

I'D GIVE FORGIVENESS I'D BEEN DENYING.

I wonder how our lives would change if we really knew how little time we have? Could we hold a grudge against someone if we knew we had only a few weeks to live? Then Tim’s song talks about being the kind of friend a friend would want.

It takes a lot of maintenance to have a friend. That’s why most of us will only have a handful of true friends in this life; friendship just takes so much time & effort. It also takes willingness to forgive & overlook people’s faults. Some people will tell you up-front they don’t have friends they have acquaintances because friends take too much time & trouble. This attitude is the essence of narcissism, the chief spiritual sickness of our times. It’s “me-ism.” This kind of self-worship looks in the mirror & sings “How great I am.” Solomon tells us it’s an awful thing for an individual to be alone in this world.

Also the song speaks of finally reading the “good book.” That would be a good thing for a dying person to do. However it would be a pity to only read the Bible at the end of our lives when it contains so much wisdom for daily living. One thing I strongly believe is, “if we live with a closed Bible, we’ll live with a closed heaven.”One of my favorite verses is Jeremiah 23:29

—Is not my word like as a fire? Saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces.

Tim’s song adds, -- “I’d take a good long look at what I’d do if I could do it all again.”

As pastor James says, life is brief. Its here one day & gone the next & sometimes it ends unexpectedly. We live & die & are soon forgotten. Someone will make a fuss over us for a short time & then our existence on this planet is forgotten. After a short time no one will stay up night after night & grieve our passing. At most our life will be but a fleeting thought.Does this sound negative to you? It shouldn’t. If we properly comprehend the brevity of life as James teaches us, it has a positive impact on us.

We will live each day as if it were our last. And we’ll confront forgiveness issues & say the things we should say to the people in our lives.Do you comprehend the brevity of life? We should all live as though we’re dying because we are.

If we had that perspective, think of how our lives would be drastically changed for the better.


Blessings,


John