As a minister I’ve visited hospitals a lot over the years, usually for a surgery or sickness that kept the patient in the hospital for a day or two, maybe longer.  Occasionally, though, it’s different.  Sometimes people are facing the day that in some sense they’ve always feared.

A few years ago I got a call from someone I didn’t know in another state, and she asked if I would visit a relative of hers who was in a local hospital.  I agreed, of course, but when I got to the hospital I realized the situation was more serious than I thought.  He was alone in ICU and was in critical condition.  I prayed with him, and he seemed to understand what was happening, then he stopped breathing.  I summoned the nurses, and they walked in and took over.

When you’re in the presence of death your first concern is for the people who are most intimately affected — the person himself, and then his family and close friends.  You want to do what you can to comfort them, to bring them peace, to help them feel God’s presence.

But then, inevitably, comes self-reflection. This introspection is natural, I think, and probably part of what the Teacher meant when he wrote, “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart” (Ecclesiastes 7:2).  He’s talking about funerals, but ICUs and ERs probably work almost as well.

“That day is coming for me,” we think.  One day my spouse or parent or best friend will be lying in a bed like that one.  What will I wish I had done?  What will I wish I had said?

And then even closer to home, one day I will be lying on that bed.  What will matter then?  My hobby, my job?  My house, my car, my things?

On that day, I won’t think a lot about much of what occupies my thinking now.  I won’t fret over the outcome of the football game, the worrisome noise in the SUV, the minor annoyances of life.

But I’ll want to know that I’ve walked with Jesus.  I’ll want to know that I helped the people around me to know the Lord.

I’ll have regrets, but I’ll find peace in knowing that God won’t hold them against me.  Jesus put them on his shoulders and carried them up Golgotha’s hill — every thoughtless word, every unkind act, every impure thought.  He became my sin so that I might become His sinlessness.  He took on my guilt so that I could be clothed in His innocence.

When that day comes for you and me, that’s all that’ll matter — our life with Jesus, and the corollary effects it had on our relationships with others.

Maybe I can paraphrase the Teacher’s words like this: “It’s better to go to an ICU room than to a dining room, because the hospital teaches us what’s most important.” *

Thank you, Chuck, for the poignant reminder that what matters most is our relationship with God.

The good news (the Gospel) is that Jesus, God’s Son, died on the cross for our sins so that we might have salvation and receive the gift of eternal life (John 3:16).

God will save those who place their faith and trust in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turn from their sins in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Him before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).  He will continue to cleanse from sin those who continue to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7).

Won’t YOU focus on what really matters: your relationship with God?  Won’t YOU accept His offer of salvation and eternal life by trusting and obeying Him today?