Think of all the things that had to work out for you be here today, for you to be reading and breathing and living. First of all, you had to be born. You were not aborted. You did not die. You were given life. You have survived and thrived each day. Think of how easy it is to die. Wrong place, wrong time. One mistake. One accident. One choice. One disease. One instant. I know it's no fun to think about that, but sometimes we are forced to. Life has a funny way of reminding us not to let it pass by too quickly.
The other day, I was driving down the tollway at a little over 50 mph. Suddenly, the cars in front of me stopped. I had to slam the hardest I have ever slammed on my brakes, and for a second I didn't think I would be able to stop in time. As my car screeched to a halt, I looked down at the Guardian Angel coin I had put in my car only a couple of days earlier and thanked God. I don't think I would have died, but it did make me realize how easily one second or one jerk of the wheel could change everything.
We've all had close brushes with death, I assume. An almost-accident, an actual accident, and any type of close call with death are all fairly common occurrences. The fact that we are still alive right now, despite all the things that could go wrong in our lives, is incredible.
Look outside. Look in the mirror. Look at any of God's creations and just think about this. He made it all. He made the world spin and the sun shine. He allows you to wake up in the morning and think and express yourself and eat and LIVE. How amazing is every aspect of our wonderful world? We fail to see the significance of our body's daily workings, our safe commute to work or school each day, and the countless other things that go right every second.
Freshman year, I remember my biology teacher describing the formation of our earth with a memorable analogy. Though time has fogged my memory, I believe the analogy was similar to this: Creating our earth involved so many factors that it was like throwing a million-piece puzzle up in the air. Somehow, every single piece fell back to the ground to form a perfect and complete puzzle. The way everything worked out perfectly in the formation of our earth and in the formation of humans is so remarkable that it couldn't have simply been chance. Something, or rather someOne, guided those puzzle pieces as they fell and allowed our amazing lives to form.
Life is a gift. Your life is a gift. God has given you life...and He will take it away one day. Just as He gives you each day for a reason, He will take you away for a reason. He has blessed you with time on earth at this very moment...but you're running out of it.
We must focus on all the things that go right each instant of our lives. In doing so, we can see the blessing God has entrusted us with. Life is a like a precious present. Why should we allow it to be trampled upon? Why not protect this amazing gift? We're living on borrowed time, and as it runs out, there is only one thing that can keep us from God: ourselves. Let's live each day making the most of the wonderful gift of life God has entrusted us with.
"What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong
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