Walking through the cemetery this weekend, I noticed the many flags on the graves. These were for those who served in the military. I stopped at one grave. One inscription caught my eye; “Died in Action.”
A good friend of mine once told me that he was going to leave skid marks into the grave. He was strong and had great physical endurance. He is older now, but I believe he could still leave skid marks into the grave.
I have heard other people described as having one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Some of us don’t have the choice to die in action physically. Prayer is definitely action. We could go down praying. There are a lot of ways to die. We don’t always get to choose how we will die. Hezekiah was afraid to die and turned to the wall and begged God for more years. God granted him fifteen more years. Those years turned out to be wasted. It is not how long we live, but how we live that counts.
The thing that I asked myself is, “How am I going to live my remaining days, even my last day?” Jesus went to the cross on HIs last day. There He died in action for me. To some on that day, it no doubt seemed like a wasted death. If the heavens could have been opened, and people could have seen the great spiritual battle going on around that cross, there would have been no doubt that Christ’s death was a victory death. The purchase of salvation cost death in action. Thank you, Jesus, for dying in action for me!
How we come to the end of the journey and walk the last mile is of course important. How we live every day is important. Other people may not appreciate us. We may try to be honest, work hard, be happy and smile, do good, give the world our best, only to be cheated, torn down, rejected and counted for nothing. That should not surprise us. That is what they did to Jesus. However, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that He was doing the will of the Father.
Living or dying, let’s take action to please God!
