A man in West Texas was buried in his Cadillac, prompting a friend at the funeral to say, "Now that is living." Define your life in a word. For me to live is . . . "My job," "My money," "My family," "My sports teams . . ." We will know what life is about for us if we consider what dominates our thoughts, our time and our expenditures. Paul lived with remarkable clarity. B.C., before Christ, he would have said, "For me to live is keeping the law exactly and meticulously and persecuting those who do not." But A.D., after Christ became his Lord, he said, "For me to live is Christ."
Like Hamlet in Shakespeare's play, Paul found himself in a quandary. "To live or not to live . . ." For the sake of Christ he had nearly lost his life on a number of occasions. Then in prison, at times he wondered whether death would be better than life. Some of our most wonderful senior saints pray and ask God to take them home to be with Jesus. Paul understood that death would be even better than life because he would be in the presence of Christ. Of course we want to live as long as God chooses to leave us here. But for Christians, death holds no ultimate fear.
What if we thought as Paul did on this subject? Let's stay before the Lord today until we can say, "To live is Christ . . ." If Christ become the most important part of life, our treasure, our all, then we will find with Paul that death no longer frightens us. We wait before him until he becomes our whole life. Then when he calls us home, we will discover what life really is!
