It Happens

 It didn’t happen this week. At least, it didn’t happen to me. There are great and famous folks it happened to but not me. Nelson Mandela was a famous leader of the nation of South Africa and a great hero to the people he helped to free from the slavery of human tyranny and bondage. I heard of him and admired him most of my life. It happened to him, he was ninety five years old. Paul Walker was some kind of movie actor from America I never heard of before. I never saw any movie he was in. I did not know anything about him until I heard the news of it happening to Him. He was about half as old as the other man. It happened to him this week. Although they were quite different from each other and lived worlds apart, they had one thing in common when it happened. They both left everything behind; everything. I do not know whose they are or where they are now.

 I expect it to happen, even look forward to it. You might even say there is a certain sense of joyful expectation in my looking toward the time when it happens.  Joy comes not from circumstance but from the expectation of the heart. When Israel was enslaved in Egypt they played as children, grew up, fell in love, married, had children and grew old. All with varying degrees of joy, all while enslaved and in circumstances they longed to be out of. Most were so filled with joy while traveling away from that tyranny that they could not think of returning. Yet some longed for the few treats they had enjoyed then. I joyfully expect that when it happens I will be so much more blessed and enthralled with who I am with that I won’t ever long for that which I leave behind.

 It may happen next week and I’m okay with that. My wife may not be, my children might object. I however am okay with next week or the week after or whenever. I am fine with then because I know whose I am and where I am going. Expectation seems to be the key. When I speak to others who do not know where they will be after it happens, they do not see the joy I feel. Their expectation is often an empty void. Some have rich fulfilling lives but no hope beyond this life. It will happen. It will happen to them whether they are ready or not. I will happen to me at a time which is not of my choosing. It will happen to you. Perhaps that is why you are reading this now.

 It happens to approximately one hundred fifty thousand people on this world each day. You know of a few of them when they are reported on the news. Perhaps a few times each year it happens to someone you personally have met. But it really impacts you when it happens to someone in your family. Maybe, when it happens to someone that close to you, maybe you wonder, “Where are they now?”

Maybe you think “Were they prepared?” And you think back to the life they lived and  the evidence their life gives as to where they are. And maybe you wonder where you will be when it happens to you. What if it were possible for you to be prepared to look forward to that time with joyful expectation? Would you want to be prepared? What if you could be rich beyond your wildest dreams tomorrow, would you? What if all the “what ifs” could be true?

 I don’t know about all the “what ifs” but I do know about this one thing. It will happen to me and it will happen to you. I know that I am looking forward to that time with joyful expectation. I know you can too. It takes a knowledge and insight that some folks will never know. It takes a belief in a creator God who loves and provides joy to all who will believe. It takes a faith which is not from within you. It is a gift from God. It is okay if you do not believe there is a God, He believes there is a you. And you matter to Him. Years ago He wrote a book. Not with His own hands but with the hands and minds of forty different people who He impressed with exactly what He wanted you to know.  He did it because He loves you. He wants you to know that He knew the day you were conceived in your mother’s womb that it would happen to you.

 He wants you to know all about Him and your future together. That is what His book is for; then and now. He wants you to look forward to then with joy and He wants you to know and love Him now with joy. I remember almost forty years ago I looked up into a starlit southern sky and said “God, if you are really real, show me the truth and I will believe it.” He did and I did. I do. For almost forty years I have learned of Him and His joy. I look forward to when it happens so I may behold Him face to face in all of His glory.

 It is my hope that you will also know that day of joy in your life. Here is the greatest truth I know. He loves you. So much that He died for you and now lives again in expectation that you and He will have great joy together. He loves you even though you may not be interested in Him or His love or His joy or His book. But right now it is my hope that you will be interested enough in what you have read to say this one thing. “God, if You are real, show me the truth and I will believe it.” Because one day, perhaps soon, perhaps later, it will happen. Your spirit will be separated from your body and the life you knew will end and the life you will continue into will either be with joy with Him, or not. It happened to them. It will happen to me. It will happen to you.