Our Last Meal on Earth

Our Own Green Mile

“And I think about all of us walking our own green mile… …each in our own time.” – The Green Mile

I’ve been reflecting on this quote for a couple days and really letting it resonate within me. The quote comes The Green Mile, a movie that stars Tom Hank as the head of Death Row during the Great Depression. He’s reflecting on his life and the lives of those that have come to pass and comparing them to those same lives he used to oversee as they waited until their death and took their final walk down the Green Mile to the execution chair. He decided we’re all walking our own Green Mile, some people’s last longer, but the same fate awaits us both.

As I pondered this thought and examined my life a lot of things faded out and a lot of things focused in. I guess when you examine the shortness of life and the importance of each day, binge watching the newest Netflix show seems pretty trivial. Life is short, it’s often compared in the Bible as a mist, a vapor, a shadow, and so on. When we take that mindset up it allows us to truly focus on the important things in our lives.

The Final Meal

As I reflected on walking my own green mile I quickly thought of what happens just before the last walk. That final meal. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years, what my last meal would be and finally I came across my answer. I didn’t care and truly I don’t. For me it’s always been less about what I’m eating and more of who I’m with. Family and friends have truly changed my life and God has used them at every stage of my life to get me through, speak wisdom, love me, encourage me, support me, and many times God has used them to show me His own characteristics.

When we reflect on the shortness of life I think we’d all have the same response as I had to our last meal and why wouldn’t we? If we asked those same people in the movie or in real life, they would agree with us in a heartbeat. Wouldn’t we all trade in an expensive steak dinner with all the fixings by ourselves for a final meal with the ones we love best, even if it was something as simple as a ham and cheese sandwich and some potato chips?

So What Are We Doing?!?!

I grew up in a family where everyone was on the go. Sometimes we went places that mattered like practices or work and other times we just went to our rooms, but sometimes we would enjoy eating together while watching tv. It wasn’t until I grew up and started appreciating and desiring things like being with my family that I realized we never took time to do them together. The children of the house didn’t want to be around the parents and the parents didn’t want to force us so we did our own thing and once in a blue moon we would gather together around a nice meal and actually talk about our lives. I wish I was a minority in that upbringing but as the world speeds up and kids grow up faster it seems just the opposite. This way of living is more and more normal and it won’t be until it’s to late (when the kids have graduated and left, when at the hands of death we lose a loved one) that we will truly realized what we missed out all those times when we could have been together.

Recent studies show that parents have just under 40 minutes of meaningful conversation with their children each week. It averages to be just over 5 minutes a day truly building and encouraging your children and knowing how their life is. They also show an increase in grades and a decrease in deviant behavior or problems whether it be eating disorders or drugs. It all stems from being in an engaging and positive setting. Besides the statistics, eating together allows you to better ministry and get to know your children because it gives you extra bonding time together every day to recount how your days are going and what’s going on in your lives.

Eating together will take more time, more discipline, and work but I assure you it is worth it. Life is to short to let the small moments like enjoying a meal with the ones we love closest to slip by every day. So as you walk your own green mile alongside your family don’t be afraid to go above and beyond and make the most out of every day you have with each other.  Because truth be told, we don’t know how much time we have and if you’re not careful you could experience your last meal by yourself instead of with your loving family.

The Start of a New Day

Starting the Day off Right: Coffee

Is there anything better than that freshly brewed cup of coffee in the morning. You wake up early in the morning still tired from yesterday. Your feet hurt from being on them all day, your groggy, and you don’t have any motivation for this dreary dreary Monday. But then, you take a sip of that hot coffee in your favorite mug and suddenly you’re invincible. You can take on anything. No mountain is too tall for you to conquer after that first cup. Eventually though, that “pick-me up” fades off and the grogginess comes back stronger than before. We begin to crash hard; lucky for us we can have a second cup of coffee in that moment. So we delay the inevitable just a little longer.

Coffee, in itself, is a beautiful thing. It truly can spark us at a moment and give us the energy we need to complete a task that feels like otherwise we wouldn’t be able too. The problem, however, is that when used as our main source of energy it begins to dictate us. We become consumed with coffee as our source to get us through each day and to get us by day-to-day. We need to learn to monitor our intake so that we can best live.

Starting the Day off Right: Christ

Is there anything that Christ can’t do? Is there anything you can’t do when you’re mind is focused on His Kingdom? As you focus on His love you see: your ability to love sky-rockets, your patience in hard circumstances rises, your joy throughout the day increases, there’s a boost to your peace throughout your day, and you find unsaid kindness, gentleness, and faithfulness to those around you. How do we get to this point? It may not be as far away as you think. Your entire day can be effective from your mood, attitude, desires, everything in only fifteen minutes.

The Perfect Combination

Too often we let the first fifteen minutes after we step out of our bed dictate the flow of the day. We hit the snooze one to many times and next thing we know we are rushed all morning getting as we get ready. As we leave to drive to work still half putting make-up on or fixing our hair to get it right in our review mirror we never fully feel ourselves. We come into work hoping to slide our time card in at exactly the same minute we’re suppose to clock-in, barely getting it but giving us our first sigh of relief. How long after that does it take to recover though? We feel unprepared for the day and spend the whole day trying to play catch-up or consuming as much coffee as we can to drown out the grogginess and horrible beginning to our day. As we get home, emotionally drained from trying to survive all day we immediately have are forced with the reality that there is no free time. We come home to cook supper, entertain the children, help them with their homework, put them to bed, and try to maintain a clean house. We fall on our beds exhausted at the end of the day hoping for a better day tomorrow.All of that because one or two extra snoozes.

Let me paint a different picture though. We intentionally wake up fifteen minutes early, don’t get me wrong we are just as tired as yesterday, but in the scheme of the day sleeping fifteen extra minutes will neither make nor break our day. We drag our butts out of bed grab our Bible and head to the kitchen. As we sit at the table, we grab a cup of coffee we take a sip and we just made up the fifteen minutes of energy we were hoping to make by sleeping in. As we sip our coffee we read the Word; it’s all so good it’s hard to know where to read but we decide on Philippians 2 because that’s where the Spirit is leading us. We read about Christ Supremacy and how He lead and served us. We finish the chapter and take a couple of minutes just to sit in the presence of God as we finish our coffee and pray that we would begin to humble ourselves as Christ demonstrated through His life. We start to get ready for the day and we are right on schedule for a normal day. We spend our time preparing for the day and we can’t stop thinking about what Christ had revealed to us in our devotion. We get to work a couple of minutes early (we’re punctual people after all). We’re on top of our game today, morning started off right we strike up a conversation at the water cooler and begin to be intentional with one of our co-workers. It wasn’t planned and we didn’t really want to at the beginning but God seemed to call us to a higher standard and we’re intuned today. We come home and we are in a great mood! Our family may notice, they may not, but we don’t care, we’re excited to see how their days went. We spend our evenings pouring into them just like the night before and as we hit the bed exhausted at the end of the day we have full confidence that God can work through us the same way tomorrow.

Moving Forward in Life

The beginning of our day can affect every part of our day. That’s why it’s crucial to start it off the right way, by surrendering ourselves to God and His plan. As we open up our hearts and begin to truly listen to Him as we start our day He won’t disappoint us, He will answer, speak and lead us. I painted to very distinct (and different) days above now is that always going to be the case? Absolutely not. But it could be more days than not. The good news is whatever way we start our day, tomorrow will always be a new day and a fresh start. That’s the beauty of the Gospel and Jesus’s undeserved unfailing eternal grace. It awaits us every morning rain or shine, granting us the opportunity for a more loving, joy-filled, and peaceful life with Him. So start your day off right, wake up early, grab some coffee and give yourself fully to Christ who will never let you down and will always change your day.

Fruit of the Spirit: Peace

^“22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” – Galatians 5:22-23

Life is HARD!

Life is messy, busy, complicated and hard! In a faith that says serve God and not money we are thrown into a world that says money is the most important thing about you. Even if you don’t want to care about how much money you make we still live in a world where bills have to be paid, mortgage has to be done, savings have to be built up, food has to be bought, fun needs to be had, and the children are always asking for more more more. We have to balance working, children, spouses, friends, hobbies, and time to rest. It’s hard and if we’re not careful can spend more time worrying about how we are doing and what needs to be done then enjoying the blessings God has given us.

If we are caught up worrying and frustrated all the time the relationships around us will suffer. Those around us will feel like they are constantly walking on egg shells. They may start to question the circumstances of our love being conditional rather than unconditional. Tension will be building. Life is hard, but luckily we can have peace.

A Gift of Peace?

As Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before He was arrested and His trial which would ultimately lead to His death by crucifixion He taught His disciples one last time. One of the things He promised to His disciples and ultimately to us was the Holy Spirit. In this Holy Spirit they (we) would receive peace.

“Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” – John 14:27

Jesus gave us all peace as He left us. How does that peace affect us though and is it really there?

Under Protection, Under Care

As Jesus spoke during the Sermon on the Mountain He talks about not worrying about tomorrow because tomorrow has enough worries, today’s troubles are enough to take care of. He talks about God’s loving hand of protection and comfort taking care of the birds of the air. The birds always have food to eat and yet they do not plant or store up food, every day their food is provided. He talks about the flowers of the field how beautiful they are clothed. He does this to point out one thing to those listening, you are more valuable. You are more valuable than the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, so if God cares enough to give them food and provide clothing for them don’t you think He cares even more about you. We don’t have to get caught up because God is with us and He is for us and He will take care of us no matter what where we go.

Peace that Last

As we rethink our peace we can walk away with a couple lasting thoughts.

1. Peace comes from being God-centered. As we concentrate on what truly matters in life (living for Christ and leading others to Him) the rest of the distractions fade to static.
2. Our Father will ALWAYS take care of us. It may not be what we think, we may not win the lotto, we may struggle, but He is faithful and will lead us through the fires.
3. Trusting in God and His plan leads to peaceful living. Peaceful living breeds continuity in families where they can more freely be themselves and love each other.

As we continue to give our worries to God, He will not disappoint. The more we put ourselves out there and are filled (by Him) the more naturally it will become to us. We will seek God first and be joyful knowing that He has and will provide for us. That will free us up to a peaceful life not necessarily without barriers but spiritually and emotionally being free.

Our Perspective in Struggle

Overview of Video

In this video, Gretchen Norlund, talks about her doubts of God while struggling with Cystic Fibrosis. How could God love her and create her so beautifully and delight in her while giving her this disease that she would have to battle her entire life and control so much of what she could and couldn’t do? How come God hasn’t healed her of this disease? Is her faith too small? Is her sin too big? Doubt and skeptic moods creep on sparingly and Gretchen has to decide what to do (or believe) next.

Gretchen enlightens us by reminding us that our ability to trust God isn’t based on what He gives us rather on His love. She also phrases so beautifully a comparison to our dictating circumstances and love for God with those hard times with Job. What if our circumstances are a testament of our love of God?

In Job, a man who follows and delights in God is tested. Satan tells God it’s easy to love and be faithful when life is good, so God hands Job to Satan to show Satan that Job’s faith and love isn’t depicted on his life or the blessings he receives. Gretchen highlights what that interaction could have looked like in her own life in a way that challenges the audience in their own perspective with their life.

Reason for Choosing

Gretchen’s faith and joy for life was instrumental in my walk with Christ and as I watched this video my perspective of how to view my struggles was changed from this is standing in the way of Christ in my life to this is how I show Satan that Jesus is my rock.

Gretchen lived her whole life with Cystic Fibrosis and never let it concur her. She was a worship artist and musician despite having a disease that attacked her lungs, she sung so beautifully and glorified God all the more just as she tells about through out her life.

On April 10, 2015 Gretchen passed away from complications with her Cystic Fibrosis. I wanted to give all of you a glimpse of the Sister in Christ we lost, one that God formed and delighted in all the days of her life. She is now, singing songs without pain worshipping and lifting up the One who saved her in His presence.

Lesson

Life is hard. We face challenges every day of our lives whether through our illness, financial problems, health issues within our family, loss of job, or whatever it may be. I hope that you can come to think of these not as a punishment, but instead you can picture the exchange God and Satan had with Job in your own life.

“She wouldn’t love you if she didn’t have everything. Fire her from her job then they’ll lose faith. Let that child’s life be rocked by a divorce then he’ll turn away from you. Give their child a disease and see if they still worship you, I bet they won’t, I bet they turn from you.” – Satan

“Try them. I believe their faith and love will still shine.” – God