Ecclesiastes 3: 11

"He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end."

I have been sitting with my dad and watching him die. It has been an excrutiatingly painful two days....and it is not over. His body refuses to give up. Breath after agonizing breath....a heartrate fast enough to have run a marathon for two straight days and respirations labored and rapid with a cough that sounds like he is drowning and yet he lives. I know he's ready to go. He made that abundantly clear last week. He was happiest on Tuesday when I came in and he announced that he was going home that day. Said the Lord told him. Wanted to know why in the world we went to all the trouble to bathe and shave him when he was going to be cremated that night.

And then....he woke up on Wednesday and I'm here to tell you.....all hell broke loose. The man was livid. My previously sweet and docile father threw a temper tantrum that our family affectionately calls a "Rodgers fit." By the time I got there he had already taken on three of the staff and Billy and he looked at me with venom and said, "BETRAYER." Apparently since I had signed the papers to have his power of attorney I was supposed to have killed him that night - I had the "power." It would have been humorous had he not been so mad at me.

Anyway...I digress. My point is.....I have always wondered why our bodies keep fighting for life when there is no way to live. My daddy's body is consumed by cancer. His lungs are shot. His brain is eaten up. He is almost paralyzed now on the right and he goes to scratch his nose with his left hand and totally misses his face. His diseased body is failing. But breath by breath he fights for life. Why? Because of our focal verse.

God created us to live forever. Our bodies know it. They fight to maintain it. Isn't that something? My daddy's spirit is yearning to break free of its shell. As he grows increasingly closer to eternity my sister and I were catching him talking to someone in the room. Sometimes he was extremely serious and other times he would have a smile on his face. Mind you, his strength is gone. There is no voice, no sound. All energy is consumed with the task of breathing and yet that left hand will move up - to beckon or to praise? I'm not sure...but I believe there is something he sees that we cannot. I believe he is taking care of unfinished business - eternal business.

You were created to live forever. In God's timing your days will end and it will be the right time. My daddy will go when God calls him - he will not be late and he will not be early. Neither will you. You must make your days count for His sake. It is in your living that God will accomplish His plans and His purposes and it will be in your death that those plans and purposes will be revealed. Live well.