 "Come
now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to
this or that city, spend a year there, carry on
business, and make a profit.” You do not even know
what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You
are a mist that appears for a little while and then
vanishes.Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord is
willing, we will live and do this or that.”
James 4:13-15
Bucket lists…do you have one? I was shocked when my
17 year old told me not long ago that he has a
bucket list at such a young age! “To see the aurora
borealis”, is at the top of his list. Then the
second he said is “to ride an ostrich!” I have to
admit, the second one made me laugh! But we all
probably have things that we want to do before we
die. For some, it’s more than a ‘want’, we actually
make a plan to do things. People scrimp and save for
months or even years to take a trip they long for.
Some actually work overtime and just plain work hard
for decades because they are determined to move to a
certain place to retire, or perhaps get an RV and
the highway roam.
None of these things are bad of course, and it is
good for us to enjoy the days before us, for every
single day is gift from above. But I wonder if at
times we are looking too short sided? Is the chief
goal of our lives really to do some fun things
before we die? As God reminds us, we don’t even know
if we will get a tomorrow. For our life is like a
‘mist’, or as other translations put it, ‘a cloud’.
And all of us who have laid on a grassy hill looking
at the shapes and images clouds make for a moment,
know how quickly clouds move on and dissipate. Such
are the days of our lives.
Since God has made it clear to us that our days are
short and eternity so long, maybe our bucket lists
as Christians need to be reassessed to look farther
than just this misty, short life? What would an
“eternal bucket list” look like to you? I actually
have one. On this list, I want to make sure that my
retirement destination is Heaven. On the altar of my
life that I worship on, I bring Jesus my sin and
purposefully cling to the grace of my Savior and the
salvation He gives. To be right with God through
Jesus is not a bucket list “to do” sometime down the
road when you think you’ll be close to dying. Life
is short and only God knows when it ends. Second, I
want my loved ones in Heaven with me. This too is
not just something I hope to address someday down
the road. As a father, I’m always warning my kids
about sin's snares and point them to an active life
of faith. Do they listen now that they’re mostly
grown? Well, not always. But life is a journey, and
as long as I draw breath to travel here, I will do
all I can encourage them to Jesus.
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Also on my bucket list is to get
people to Church. Why? Because Christians are
backsliding in this area terribly in our nation, and
we are seeing it’s affects every day on the news.
Communities more than ever need more than just
Christians “watching Church” on a computer or TV. We
are called to BE THE CHURCH. In my lifetime I have
seen Church attendance go from 53% in my
grandparents’ WWII generation attending every
Sunday, drop down to 13% in my children's generation
who are millennials. If only 13% of kids were
attending school, we’d be up in arms at PTA
meetings! If we saw only 13% of able bodied people
working in society, we would be pulling out our hair
and asking ‘where are all the workers?!’. There will
be no Church, no preachers, no more discipleship if
this trend continues, and then what will our world
look like and who will preach Jesus to the next
generation? If our bucket list has eternity in mind,
we must act now and not hope others will labor in
Christ’s vineyard, instead of it being on our own
list to do. Currently, we are facing a spiritual
epidemic in our land much more dangerous than Covid.
Bucket lists are good to have, for indeed our days
are short and we should enjoy God’s gift of life on
this planet. Bucket lists for eternal things should
all the more be on our hearts because the Lord has
shown us there is more than just the short lived
mist of life.
Daily devotion by
Pastor Dan McQuality,
Grace Lutheran Church, 201 S.
College St., Lincoln, IL
10:30am Sunday Worship; 9:00am Bible Study
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