On Sunday evening, as I was scrolling through Twitter, I noticed a retweet from Thomas McKenzie, an Anglican priest in Nashville. He wrote, Today is my last day of work before my sabbatical begins. I’m excited about my upcoming travels, but I know I’ll miss my community. I feel sadness and some anxiety as I prepare for this morning’s Eucharists. Knowing what a blessing a sabbatical can be for a pastor, I offered up a quick prayer that God would graciously grant this brother in the Lord a time of rest, reflection, and restoration.

So, imagine my horror and dismay, when I saw this Monday evening on Twitter:  In shock. Father Thomas McKenzie and his daughter just died in an auto accident. Just like that. A 50-year-old man, who was beginning a season of temporary rest, entered into his final rest along with his daughter, aged 22.

Saints, life is short. The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon, and we fly away (Psalm 90:10). The Apostle James asks What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes (4:14). Our length of days is numbered. We will not enter our eternal rest one second too soon or one second too late. Even our Savior in the Sermon on the Mount noted this when he asked And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? (Matthew 6:27)

I’m not trying to depress you. I am wanting us all to live in the reality of our situation. The minute we are born, we begin the steady march to our deaths. And we don’t know when that will be. Some lives are measured in decades, some in years, some in months, some in weeks, some in days, and some in seconds.

So the question becomes, How should one live in light of this truth? For this life, let us remember it is a gift from God. So, enjoy those gifts with thanksgiving. Spend time in God’s creation, marveling at the beauty of it. Invest in relationships, both your relationship with God and your relationship with others.

Kiss your spouse (often). Hug your kids (often). Roll on the floor. Romp in the grass. Play one more game. Make ice cream runs in your pajamas. Go outside on a cloudless night and stare up at the stars and try to count them. Choose joy and be overwhelmed by the wonder of it all. As the famous theologian Ferris Bueller noted, Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. Don’t miss it.

But also in this life, let us prepare for the life to come. Turn from sin in repentance and turn to Jesus in faith. Get to know more of God through His word. Meet with Him in prayer. Get a foretaste of what awaits us in the new heavens and new earth by gathering with the saints for worship on the Lord’s Day. And may we echo the Psalmist, So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12).