Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes (James 4:13-14).
Jonathan Edwards, the great early American preacher, had a marvelous way with words. He wrote thousands of pages reflecting on the Scriptures with some amazing insight. One day, he was musing about how to live the Christian life and wrote, “Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.”
In other words, Edwards was committed to living each and every day as if it were his last. If we’re to do that, it means two things. First, it means we take risks for the sake of our ultimate mission of making Jesus famous. Second, it means we live every day how we’d want to be remembered if it were our last.
I think most Christians would probably agree with Edwards’ sentiments of living every day as it were their last. But the problem is that they often lose focus in light of the everyday. They miss the forest for the trees!
Take risks. Live to be remembered. When we make that our lifelong goal and focus, we’ll end our lives knowing we made a real and lasting impact on the world for Christ. There’s nothing else that really matters.
