Elvis Presley had one. So did George Washington, Fredrick Douglass, Mother Teresa, Harriet Tubman, Billy Graham, and Billy the Kid. Even Jesus of Nazareth had one.
If you live on this earth until your body dies, you will also have one: the shortest day of your life.
A normal day gives us 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, 84,600 seconds. But as believers we know that there is coming a day when “the body is put back into the same ground it came from” (Ecclesiastes 12:7 The Message). That will be our shortest day.
As people who are committed to generosity and living with an eternal perspective, it may be useful for us to ponder that shortest day from both practical and planning perspectives.
As a practical matter, how can we avoid spending the moments of that day in anger, fear, or frustration? How can we prepare for those moments to be spent in peace, hope, and love?
From a planning perspective, being ready for our shortest day means making decisions ahead of time for the people and property entrusted to us by God. These decisions are typically referred to as an estate plan, and every Christian adult can benefit from a good plan based upon biblical principles.
In Psalm 139 we read, “In Your book were written All the days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them” (Psalm 139:16 NASB). God—the Creator of the Universe—cares enough about us to know all of our days, even the shortest one. May we rest in that thought while living each day with anticipation.
