“What would you do if today was your last day on earth?” It was a provocative ‘what if’ question brought on by our recent viewing of the movie, “Knowing” featuring Nick Cage. I asked it curiously of my eleven-year-old, who gave me a rather odd answer, and then each of us gave our answers around the dinner table elaborating on how we would spend our last day on earth and who with.

This evening, I was thinking more about that little question and I was wondering how I would reflect on my life’s work. I think I would reflect on what I have done for my family, for my community, for the world. I think as we begin to grow older, we stop thinking about what we are trying to accomplish and we tend to start thinking more about what we have accomplished. It’s one of the natural rhythms of life, I suppose, as more life stretches out behind you than before, you find yourself remembering more and planning a little less.

Throughout my chidhood, I had various teachers tell me that I should set goals and achieve them. I always had a hard time with that, though, as I have always believed in a good share of providence. At the age of twelve, I had decided I would be a professional tennis player, but I couldn’t achieve it. At the age of sixteen, I was going to be a country singer, but I couldn’t achieve that. At the age of twenty-four, just hours from my reaching my first quarter century of life, I had admitted sadly that I had no plan, no idea, and was going nowhere. All I had done was pass twenty-five years away.

One night at the age of twenty-eight, my darkest hours came. As I passed through my deepest loss, another failed relationship, I had nowhere to go, but to God in hopes that He could pull me through. He was there waiting for me–my true purpose already planned, ready to be executed. There in the darkness, I finally found my purpose, a finer purpose than any that I could have constructed for myself. Peace finally became my friend. My real education was about to begin.

Since those days, I have reached out in order to find a little bit of God’s beauty in the world everyday. I’ve found that the world is brimming with it, but I had blinders on and couldn’t see it. I have learned to love people for the way they are and not how I want them to be. Through working with those in convalescent homes, I have learned that we deny ourselves the understanding of our own limits. We have a beginning, but we don’t admit to an ending. We pretend that we will go on forever, but we are finite. When you work with those on the brink of their end, you start to achieve a peace with your only limits, but also a sense of urgency at what you could accomplish with only a little more time.

When today is your last day on earth, the ailing ecomony, politics, and making money all fall aside to reveal the raw truth that life isn’t about what we want, but about who we love and how we love.