By The Rev. Vance Lowe
For The Salisbury Post
I do not like the feeling you get when you delete something from your computer when you did not mean to.
I do not know how it happens. After all, the message on the screen reads, “Are you sure you want to delete this file?”
The page or pages you may have spent hours on are gone in a flash. The good work of the creative side of your brain is gone to return no more in the time it takes to flip a light switch.
All that hard work and time and investment of yourself vanishes in a heartbeat. It is gone, as gone as gone can be.
That is, unless a computer guru can go deep into the bowels of your computer and recover it. I have tapped the delete key many times when it was a mistake. I should join a support group for “over deleters.”
There also seems to be a “delete” button operative in life. As a good friend of mine once said, “Life is terminal.”
He was right, for each one of us will eventually die. I know this morbid thought is not what anyone wants to ponder. This reality, though, is as true as anything can be.
The idea sounds so crazy but pondering our own death may show us how to really live life! Our culture would have it otherwise. Those who speak electronically for our culture seek to bombard us with toys and remedies and things that will lead us to the fountain of youth so that we can feel immortal. What a waste! The outcome for every life is the same.
The Ash Wednesday liturgy uses these words as the ashes are drawn in the shape of a cross on the forehead of the worshipper: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Repent and believe the gospel.”
Someday, the delete key will go down and your life will be over. It may come quickly or it may come in a long and drawn out way. Like deleting a file by mistake, it will cause pain and agony also. The stakes will be much. Much higher this time. This time God will be pressing the delete key and it will be no mistake.
It always sounds so corny but it always plays out to be true. If you and I lived each day as if it were our last day, it would change this world!
Click … delete.
nnn
The Rev. Vance Lowe is senior pastor of First United Methodist Church, China Grove.