38 Minutes

38 minutes doesn’t seem like a long time, less than a one-hour TV show. Less than my old commute to the office. Many of us waste at least 38 minutes everyday, waste in the sense that we don’t know where the minutes go. There are 1,440 minutes in a day, so that makes 38 minutes 2.64% of a day - not much, and in the context of a week or month or year...even less.

Of course I’m referring to the false message of an incoming missile sent to the people of Hawaii this past Saturday; for many of those people it was a terrifying 38 minutes. 38 minutes to call those you love, 38 minutes to do your best for your spouse and children. 38 minutes to do what you can for your pets. I wonder if anyone had regrets as he or she thought the end was near.

After it was broadcast that it was a false alert many people starting joking about the experience, black humor if you will. I wonder how many will stop and reflect and ask, “What if it had been real? What if Saturday had been my last day?”

I am reading The Sacred Year by Michael Yankoski. Yankoski got my attention when I read about his encounter with “carnival Christianity” - he was a speaker at popular “Christian” conferences, going with the high-energy flow, when he was confronted with a series of events that caused him to ask just what exactly he was doing, what was he involved in, just how shallow had he become.  I’m still working through the book, and while there are some things that are like fish bones to me, all in all I find Yankoski’s meal worth digesting; I’m sure I serve up my share of fish with bones.

I just finished a chapter in which Yankoski contemplates death during his sacred year. This is not morbid, it is sobering. To be sure he goes a bit further than I would in this contemplation, to be exact he goes 1,405 shovelfuls of dirt further than I would in contemplating death. You see Yankoski got permission from a cemetery to allow him to hand dig a grave and it took him six hours and 1,405 shovelfuls of dirt to do the job. Then he laid down in the grave and contemplated death...and life. That must have been quite a perspective.

Contemplating death, the brevity of life, is a spiritual discipline that has been practiced for ages - it is good to remind ourselves that we aren’t here forever, as a matter of fact, in cosmic terms, or even planetary terms, we’re like a breath of air, the dew on the grass - here...and then...gone. This need not be morbid, not to those who know the reality of God in Christ. It can be instructive, it can remind us to keep the Main Thing the main thing; it can remind us to make the most of each day in the way we love God and others. It can remind us that the rich person doesn’t take anymore with him or her into the grave than the pauper.

Of course there are people right now, as I am writing this and you are reading this, who wonder on a daily basis whether they and their children will live or die - whether because of disease, famine, war, or natural disaster.

What are we doing with our lives? How are we living? Do we know how much God in Christ loves us? Have we come into a relationship with Jesus Christ? Are we afraid of death?

What would you do if you knew you had 38 minutes left?