Mark's Blog

My wife and I watched the whole first season of Flashforward over the last few days, and I admit being captured by it. The characters are well-developed, the actors are good, and the drama is centered on the human dilemma.  For those not familiar with it, all of the story threads revolve around how people’s lives were/are changed by a global blackout, lasting 2 minutes 17 seconds, during which time everyone saw  themselves six months later doing whatever they would be doing in those 2 minutes 17 seconds. For some it brought hope, for others despair, but for everyone the question became what to do about now.

Today as I was walking, I was thinking about the young character that has learned that he will be murdered on March 15. That led me to the question: what would I do if I knew that in thirteen days I would die? There’s no time for a Bucket List kind of response; there is no illness to usurp mind and body over these last few days as in The Notebook. What would I do if I knew that March 15 I would die suddenly?  Here are my thoughts:

Things I would not do

• I would not panic spiritually. I would be fearful of the process of dying, but I am confident in a gracious God.
• I would not feel “robbed” of future days; I’m a strong believer in “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Ps. 139:16)
• I would not publish this on FB, Twitter, or a blog—that’s just me.
• I would not join the March Madness office pool or prepare for the fantasy baseball draft.

Things I would do

• Get my will and financial affairs in order for my wife’s sake.
• Make appropriate arrangements for the LST ministry to minimize the effect of my sudden absence.
•  I would once again do something proactively to mend relationships with a few people.
• Yes, I’d probably do some kind of video for the grandkids—they are so young that they would scarcely remember me. I would not want to be maudlin, but maybe tell them stories from my life. (I have a cassette tape of my Granddad telling stories of homesteading in Arizona in first years of the 1900s, and it is much of what I remember about him.)

What would you do/not do?  Having made my lists, I have now decided that I need to take care of all of this as if my last day were right around the corner.

And by the way, if this kind of conversation makes you uncomfortable, you might try to figure out why because as Shakespeare’s Hamlet says, “If not today, then tomorrow….”