Don’t Take Any Day For Granted, Be Thankful For It

If you awaken each morning in good health and ready for a new day, be thankful. Some people have illnesses like those who have cancer that afflicts them day after day. I have quite a few friends and two family members who have had cancer or strokes in the past several years. Three of them have died. One of my close friends passed away a few days ago from the date of this writing, who just six weeks prior appeared to be perfectly normal. It happened so fast! This incident really drove home the point of being thankful every day for my health. Don’t take any day for granted.

Psalm 39:4-5 says, “O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am. Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is nothing before you.” (A “handbreadth is the distance from the thumb to the little finger, emphasizing how short our lives can be). This thought is continued in Psalm 90:10. “The years of our life are seventy, or by reason of strength eighty, yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone and we fly away.”

I thank God almost every day for my health. In response to God’s grace I, and all of us who have good health on a daily basis, need to make every day count. Some tombstones have dashes between the date of birth and the date of death. What goes in the dash is extremely significant! Have we lived a life with purpose, doing what God put us on earth to do, or have we wasted it with a daily routine of busyness, never really accomplishing much? Have we made greater goals, dreamed God-sized dreams that only He can bring about, taken steps of faith, or seen God use our life in more effective ways?

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 gives a good summary of how to spend our time in life. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.”

I have a book in my personal library entitled, One Month To Live. How would we live our lives if we knew we only had one month to live? None of us can know when our time is up! Let’s respond to God’s grace of good health by taking care of our body and mind, and by living life intentionally with a purpose, doing what He has for us to do. Then we will know we had a life worth living!