A Time to Die

Hebrews 9:27 "...it is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgement:"

   So often, when I hear this verse being quoted, it is being used to show the importance of making a decision about salvation. I used to look at it strictly in that sense as well. It was a sobering, often frightening verse. But I don't see it that way anymore. Now, when I hear or read that verse, it brings comfort and peace. "It is appointed unto man ONCE to die." I can only die one time, and God knows exactly when that moment is. To a person such as myself who finds it very easy to fear, this is a comforting thought.

  It's a wet, rainy evening tonight. I was listening to sirens going by after I got home. The sound made me think about how often God has protected me on the road. Of course, from there I thought about other times He has protected me from different things. I have absolutely no doubt that He he has a job for me to do here...if I didn't have a purpose, I probably would have been killed in a car wreck years ago! Why else did my car somehow miss wrapping itself around that street light last year?


   My car sliding off the road would be an example of protection during an event. What about something that happens to slow you down so that you won't be in the middle of the event at all? When I was about 12, my family took a road trip to the Lower 48. On the way back, we lost a tire off the trailer somewhere in Canada. We were held up for a day waiting for a replacement. Not fun! We weren't complaining, however, when we got to Whitehorse and found that the highway we had to take had been completely snowed in the day before. If we hadn't stopped that one day, we would have been driving in the middle of a blizzard that dumped 5 feet of snow!

   Want another example? My aunt told me about a time when she drove to the bank, only a few minutes from her house. She pulled into the parking lot only to realize she had forgotten her checkbook. She turned around, drove back home, grabbed the checkbook, and returned to the bank. When she got to the bank she found the armored truck in the parking lot. The men in charge of it had been shot. In the few minutes she took to drive back home, the bank had been robbed. The police hand't even arrived yet!

   You may have had similar experiences, or at least read about them. I once read an email that began with different people being late for work and the stupid reasons why. Forgot doughnuts, spilled coffee, sick child...etc. All of the people were frustrated about being late, until later. You see, the date was September 11, 2001, and each of these people worked in the World Trade Center.

   So often, we get frustrated with things, traffic, not being able to find the car keys, missing a shoe (or am I the only adult who has that problem still?). But how many times has God used these little delays, to protect us. Maybe the parent who is late picking up their child saved my life because if I had been on the road 15 minutes earlier, I would have been hit by that drowsy driver who wasn't paying attention. Maybe my GPS glitched and I took that wrong turn because a drunk driver was running a red light at the intersection I needed to be at.

   Well, this post took a different turn than I expected! :) That's one thing I love about writing. Sometimes you think you're headed one place, but you end up someplace completely different! I guess my point is, that I'm no longer afraid of when I'm going to die. I'm in God's hands, absolutely, completely!

   While looking up the reference for this verse, I decided to do something else. I've used BlueLetterBible.com as a resource for years, but Pastor Sean showed us how to use it to look up specific words, to dig just a little bit deeper in meanings. As a result, when I pulled up the verse, I decided to look up the word "appointed." What I found was great!
 
   The Greek word translated "appointed" is used three other times in the Bible. Every other time, it is translated "laid up," such as "there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness" (2 Timothy 4:8). So I could say that there is "laid up" or "set aside" for me one time to die. Put that way, it adds an entirely new level of comfort to the verse.

   While I most likely will still tense and shudder every time a board a plane, I don't have to cringe in terror ever time the flight gets a little rough, or the pilot makes a sharp turn. While I will probably still be fighting thoughts such as "If the engines stop, we will drop like a rock," I don't have to really fear. God has "set aside" my time, and He will guide me through life until it comes.

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die." ~Ecclesiastes 3:1-2b