The clear voiced country singer, Willie Nelson, was recently honored by his peers on his ninetieth birthday. Now I would not hold Willie up as a role model for anyone,  but I will confess to liking many of his songs. In a recent interview this Nashville rebel said, “Live everyday like it is your last, and some day you will be right.”

While I may like his voice and enjoy his songs, when the last day comes for the guitar strumming Texan, I would not want to be in his shoes. I know what Willie means in this statement, but it is not the right approach to life.  It is as Isaiah said of Israel’s lifestyle, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we may die” (Isa. 22:13). Both statements reflect the idea of enjoying the pleasures of the world to the max before you die, with no regard to what awaits you at death.

As Christians we say, “For to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phi. 1:21). We live our life “in the world, but not of the world.”  Our lifestyle is not to seek the pleasures of the world but to “seek first the Kingdom of God (Mt. 6:33). We do not follow the fatalistic view of Job that “Man, who is born of woman, is short-lived and full of turmoil (Job 14:1), but that “This is the day which the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psm. 118:24). We live everyday ready, if it is our last, to go home to be with the Lord, “which is far better.”

-Dennis Doughty