Waiting on Eternity?

Have you ever had your own mortality come back to slap you in the face?  I'm not saying it has slapped me in the face, but I was struck pretty hard with a realization.   Life feels like it's just going so incredibly fast.  I graduated high school almost 8 years ago!   It's not that I want to go back to high school, but I can't help but wonder where these past 8 years have gone. 

While I was still in college, I attended one of the musicals Bethel put on and I found myself sitting next to my voice teacher's wife and kids.  So of course, I said hello and had some fun talking with the kids, when one of them asked me how old I was.  So I told him, "I'm 21."  His response was "You're 21? !Wow, you're almost 100!"  It was really cute, and I still laugh about it, but today, this week, this month, this past year I have been so stuck on time and the time I have left.   I feel, now only 5 years later (5 years!?!?!, where does the time go?) like I am about to turn 100 years old.  

I don't mean that I feel old. I don't feel old. But time is so precious and short and I don't have the sense of immortality that most people feel growing up. I don't have the sense that I'm going to live forever and I do have the sense that time is going too fast.

And then I start thinking about it and I remember, God limited us to 120 years, but most people don't make it that long. It is a reason for celebration if a person makes it to 100 years, but the average life expectancy for a person in the United states is about 80 years (for males, a few years less).  Then factor in family health history... diabetes, heart disease, cancer... whatever and that number easily drops by another 10 to 15 years.

So now we are looking at living to be 65 years old when you die. But then factor in your current health to your families health history. Overweight?  Smoke or live with those who do?  Inactive lifestyle?  Dangerous lifestyle?  Overstressed?   Work a job that exposes you to disease, or could potentially harm you? If the other health risks weren't enough of a risk because of family health history, they are now multiplied.  By how much, I don't know. 

 But then let's look at this stuff and say that maybe none of it actually ends your life. How long will we live still feeling and being able bodied?  How long will we be able to take care of or provide for ourselves?  Will we always have function of our legs?  Our Bowels? Our minds? Will we be able to live a meaningful life? And if we don't, when do we start losing these abilities?

So what if I only have 50 active and healthy years?  I'm already half way through them.

Now these are only 'what if' and worse case scenarios. But it does paint a picture.   Before we know it we have reached the end of our days, whether they are 50 or 80 or 100 and beyond...




I don't want to spend the rest of my short time here simply waiting on eternity.