Expiration Date (Joe Widick)

Another great lesson from Joe Widick while I am in Vietnam. Keep me in your prayers!

One of the first things Elaine taught me about grocery shopping was to be sure and look at the expiration date. Whether it is a carton of milk or a can of tuna, there is an expiration date that needs to be observed. As you read this article, Elaine and I along with 31 others from this congregation will be planning to leave Honduras. I don’t know what the trip will bring; prayerfully it will bring some comfort to those in Honduras and help those of us returning to the United States to count our many blessings. Before leaving on this trip I was in a quandary. Elaine asked me to pick up some milk. The date on the milk carton was March 14, the day we are returning. Will the milk still be good? Will we get sick, if we use it on our cereal on March 15? Hopefully not, the point however is, it did have an expiration date on it.




It is interesting to note that I am getting older. My body doesn’t respond as well to physical activity as it once did. I get tired quicker than I use to. Guess what? I have an expiration date just as each of you ! Consider the words of David in Psalm 139:16; “Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” What is David by inspiration saying to us? Before we were created all of our days were fashioned/ordained by the Lord. I don’t look at this verse as being scary or frightening, I look at it as a real comfort, to know that my life is in the hands of God. As you and I get older or suffer with illness, we naturally think about death. If we are baptized believers in Christ, we can be confident that death is an open door to eternal life with Jesus. We can gain courage from the psalmist David in this passage. We can also be comforted by the truth that the God who loves us, and gave His son for us, knows our “expiration date.”




With those thoughts ever present in our mind, we need to ask about our relationship with this wonderful and all powerful God. Have we rendered obedience to Him? Have we given our life over to Him. Do we trust Him each and every day that He gives us? We need to be able to come to an understanding by faith that even in death, God’s timing is perfect. David went on to say at the end of the Psalm; 
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:24.


God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
www.hawleybooks.com
E-mail me at steve@hawleybooks.com