Our mad dash for the dash

I had a thought brewing for a message that got its final push from a comment one of you made to me. I remembered a tombstone marking the grave of a familial relation. It's a rather large, ornate, and imposing structure that has this person's name, preceded by his "title", and followed by a list of various "accomplishments" in his life. I realized that, immediately around his time of death, his title and accomplishments probably meant something to the people seeing it, ie.; they knew who he was, and these things were pertinent to their lives. People seeing these things only decades later, though, as I did, had no "link" to all that. To put it another way, "So what?!" I know that all of those things must have been very important to him, because that is what he wanted to make sure people remembered about him, but what is remembered now?

My friend's comment that brought this message to fruition was when he mentioned people's tombstones and said this, "The deceased's life is contained in 1 dash." Everything between our birth and death is covered by that one little mark. For example:

When a person is born matters, for one must have physical life before they are eligible for eternal life. (Yes, I know life begins at conception and those who are aborted, die in the womb, or die before reaching the age of accountability go to Jesus) When a person dies matters, because that is when they either enter Heaven or Hell; they've passed the last opportunity. What about all those years in between, though? The years of struggling to: make money, gain power, make a name for themselves, acquire possessions, etc.; what happened to all those years, all those "accomplishments"? They are all contained in the "-".

Why do we spend so much of our available time and effort on things that will cease to have any meaning or value at the instant of death? If you go to Heaven, you won't be announced as: "Reverend, The Honorable, Doctor, etc." If you go to Hell, you really won't care what degrees were listed after you name or how much money you were worth. The old saying is true, "Tis only one life, 'twill soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last." Fill in the dash of your life with service to God and love towards Him and others. Make the dash long, full of things that will extend beyond the "date of decease" on your tombstone. You will not live this life forever.