This post is partly about something I can’t even begin to imagine.

I will ask you to go with me to the last moments of your life. I realize that it isn’t what most people want to think about, so we humans put it off for as long as we can. But it’s more than the punch line,“ the only two sure things in life are death and taxes.”

It seems that we will usually do anything to humorize the inevitable. I’ve been thinking recently of the only two outcomes of dying. First, I should clarify that no one actually dies. We only leave this world to enter into another. Everyone is going to live somewhere for eternity.

The choices are taking the Gift of God, His Son’s death on the cross as our substitute payment for sin by confessing with our mouth and believing with our hearts that the Blood of Jesus paid our ransom. A Christian’s death is a celebration, a HOME COMING!

When all of us left Heaven and our Creator, He sent our soul and spirit into a minuscule beginning of reproducing human matter that would become our dwelling place. Everything about who we would become entered that watery womb. What was being built in secret was simply a housing for our soul and spirit. During that time, we had no idea where we were going or into whose human hands we would be gifted. But God knew.

You are not a random collection of “parts” that God threw together and sent you forth. It’s nearly impossible to understand the depth of thought that the Almighty God put into creating each one of us. He set us adrift into this world, watching and anticipating our return Home to Him. Some of us have had a tremendous journey. Stumbling, getting back up, and falling again. Periods of calm and occasional peaceful days, where we breathe a sigh of relief. But even in those days, our feet are still leading us to the last moment of our life, where the decision will have already been made, either Eternal Life or eternal death. For a Christian, the grave was swallowed up and the sting taken out of it for us by Jesus. But that reality has to come to each one of us through activating our Faith before that last day comes.

Once the clock ticks forward on that day to the last moment, every decision we made or neglected to make is final. Game over! But it’s not a game; it’s been an orchestrated plan that was laid out for us to make choices. God, all the while knowing the outcome, has been cheering us on, sending things we were expected to notice as signs pointing in His direction. Sadly, and as unbelievable as it is, some people will believe that God doesn’t exist, or if He does, they choose not to believe in Him. Their human understanding of where they will go when death comes knocking, asking for that payment, they will simply cease to exist—poof, they are gone.

So here is my original thought at the beginning of this post—What does an atheist do when they step out of this world only to see that they were wrong!? There stands the Holy Son of God, Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit as their greeting committee. Will they scream, “Oh, God! I was wrong!" And shudder at the thought that they made the biggest unchangeable mistake of their life!

Someone recently asked me if God is so loving that surely he won't send a decent, good person to a tormenting hell. Their explanation to me of what they thought hell is going to be like comes from man’s replication of their imagination. It usually contains devils with pitchforks, flames leaping higher than the person’s head, and burning, unquenchable, heaping coals of fire for all eternity. I am no authority on that. No one is. God has given evidence of such things in His Word, which ought to send shivers down the spine of any nonbeliever.

This returns me to my original thought. Here stands an atheist who now knows the truth and that what they held to all their life was a lie.

Here is my personal understanding of what hell will be like for them. Knowing now that they will be eternally separated from God. Not another person will come witness to them, not another gospel hymn on a radio will be heard, not another coworker will share Jesus with them ever again. All the chances will flash before their eyes over and over, creating a suffering that I can’t begin to understand, such suffering, and it will never end. Knowing that you had a chance for a completely different outcome, and they turned it down time and time again. I have to pause here for a moment because my heart is breaking for these people.

So, now I will give you my personal belief of what will be my experience when my clock ticks forward in this world for the last time.

First and foremost, my eyes shall finally behold my Savior—Jesus Christ in all his glory! What I only knew in shadow will have now stepped out into the Light, and I will see Him face to face! I’ve carried this next part in my heart as my personal entrance into the presence of God.

Jesus will tenderly welcome me, extend His arm toward me, and gently entwine my arm around His. He will cover my hand with His and ask me a question, “Susan, are you ready?”

I honestly don’t know if I will be able to get the words out to answer Him—yes. Then, as the Bride, I have become He, and I will begin that slow, purposeful walk down the aisle leading to the Throne of God the Father. My eyes will be fixed on the Person I have waited a lifetime to behold.

The closer we get, the more I’ll hardly be able to take another step, but the strong arm of Jesus will steady me. When we take that last step ending at the Throne, Jesus will turn to the Father and say, “Father, Susan is home.”

I’ve never written this out; I’ve only verbally shared with others that this is the welcoming Home scene that I play in my mind. My tears come every time because it’s the very core of what I believe when I became a Christian. I want to see God—I WILL see God at last.

I don’t know what or if your last moment here contains either of these possibilities. I pray that some form of your entrance into eternity has for you something similar to mine.

Because my spirit and heart are so emotional right now, the contrast at the beginning of this post begs a moment of prayer. Who can afford that? Who can come to the end of their life and realize that life isn’t really over, but the chances of doing differently are.

Because God is Merciful and Righteous, he will have given that person numerous times to change their minds. My other thought about all this is that God didn’t create one soul with the intention of sending them to hell. He gave us all a foolproof solution. A Gift of His own Son suffering and dying an unimaginable, tormented death on a cross, stripped bare before the world so that we would be saved. Who turns that down? What possible reason could they give for doing such a thing, yet some will do that very thing.

So I end this post torn between my eyes, seeing my promised entrance into the Throne Room of God and my precious Escort. And that picture of the moment or realization dawning on an atheist who now knows the truth, but it’s too late.

If only one person reads this and it gives them pause to reconsider where they will spend eternity, then I have given them thought.

I bless you.

 Believe it or not… It’s never too late

 

I started my day with a devotional about regrets. The writer listed several regrets she, as a nurse, had heard people who were near death state.

I read the question at the end to fill in the blank of what I regretted, and I had to stop and think. I’m ashamed to say that I wasted so much of my life by putting off things I should have gotten up and started.

Now, at my age, that habit hasn’t grown easier but harder. I have this long conversation telling myself that once I get up and get started, it will get done. (The elves have never come in overnight and done any of my projects.)

It's strange that when I was younger, I remember saying to myself, “Sue, take it easy, or you’ll burn yourself out and have nothing left when you get old.”

I should have listened. You wouldn’t believe what I could do in one day when I was younger. I didn’t know how to pace myself. I thought I had to get it all done in one day.

Now I spend so much time trying to convince myself to just get up. Now that I’ve confessed, the thought came to me as I contemplated my regrets, when the Holy Spirit clearly said, “Sue, no matter what you regret having not done, you can start right now.”

I thought about that. Today is the day that the Lord has made to rejoice and be glad in. Even if today is the very last day I see this side of heaven, that thing that I kept putting off, I can start today.

When I moved here to Florida, I wanted a new beginning. The main thing I prayed for was that my faith in the Lord would be the same on the outside of me as it is on the inside. I wanted God to be more important to me than anyone or anything else. I thought at seventy-six it was surely time.

God has been answering that prayer, but not in the way I thought. Several things took a turn I wasn’t expecting. It threw me. But once He loved and comforted me and got me quiet, I began to see that He really was answering my prayer. Nothing is like having your schedule wiped out along with things you thought were going to happen.

I had no choice but to draw close to the Holy Spirit. I was so discouraged and hurt. But if the things I had been planning once I got here had happened, I wouldn’t have drawn nearer to the Lord. We think we are going to do something when, in fact, if you are like me, you end up every night telling the Lord I promise I’ll start tomorrow.

Don’t let the lie of it being too late overwhelm your mind. The other thing that the Holy Spirit whispered to me was, “Why not start now?”

No matter how much time any of us has left here, we can use it wisely. We can start with rejoicing and being glad in this day. We can focus on the goodness of God. We can tell Him how thankful we are for another day. Then let that lead to listing the blessings we have. Before I knew it, I was sitting here writing this post that I had been putting off.

Whatever you regret in your life, if you are physically or mentally able to do it, start right now. Begin by telling the Lord, Thank you for this day and see where it goes.

 

I bless you.