Oh, believe me, I know that line is thrown around often. I know that it’s cliche. (Btw, most cliches are worth listening to. And pondering. But that’s another topic for another day.) I know that people don’t understand what they are asking when they ask it. I know that it’s course. I know that it makes a person uncomfortable. I know that it sometimes doesn’t make any difference when it is answered. I know that sometimes, even when it is asked, it’s never thought about.

But what if you did?

What if you walked out into the street today, and that car didn’t stop like you thought it was going to? What if one of those cars going 70 caught the road wrong, and flipped over, and caught you in the wake? What if you drove too late, and those tired eyes you have actually caught you, and you lost control yourself? Or what if the even more unexpected things happened? What if a blood vessel broke in your brain at.this.very.moment? What if you have a heart defect that no one knows about? What if you tripped and didn’t catch yourself when you fell?

What your mother and father and family and close friends got a phone call about you tonight?

What if I attended your funeral in three days?

No, I’m not suggesting that you live every moment in fear. But what I am suggesting is that in this world where we are harder than cement to the images on the news and the front pages of magazines of starvation and injustice, that we do something. That at minimum, we ask ourselves if we would be content with leaving those people we have not forgiven, or if we would be happy with all the times we were too proud to say, “I love you.” I beg that we ask if people would come to our funerals to talk about the way our lives were light, full of encouragement, and bettered the world every second we lived. I beg that we ask of ourselves if we even understand that one day, we will simply not exist here.

Just do something.

Just learn that you are just not going to live forever. Do you even understand that?

No, I’m going to guess that we do not. Because you see, if we understood that every day of our lives could very well be our last, we would live every moment just so incredibly different than we do now. We would stop for people to cross the road. We would do our homework with joy. We would climb mountains and take photos and write letters and read the Bible. We would fight for the dying, and the starving, and the widows, and the broken. We would never use painful sarcasm. We would hold hands and give long hugs.

And we would cry over the beautiful things in life.

And we would tell every single person in our life about the light within us. His name is Jesus. It’s all we live for.

What if you died today?

Did you live everything thinking you could die today?

Don’t waste time thinking you didn’t.

Start now.

Time is running low.

Because every one of us doesn’t have forever on this earth.

And we need a world full of people living like they aren’t going to live forever.

We need you.

Because Jesus put you here to be alive.

And Jesus needs you to be alive.

So that this world can really never die.

…because love wins.