About two days after arriving in Honduras, I was randomly blessed with about 2 minutes of free wifi. I quickly checked my email and what was going on in the facebook world. Scanning through my facebook messages, I froze in shock, my hand over my face as I read a message from a dear friend. Our roommate during our first year of college had passed away from injuries sustained in a car accident. Tears welled up in my eyes as I tried to process the news I had just received. We weren't very close anymore, I hadn't talked to her in months. But my first year of college was spent at an alternative campus called Wisconsin Wilderness Campus with only 39 students. We became a family that year, and member of our family had just been torn from us.
I found refuge on the rock wall at the edge of our property, overlooking the majesty of God's mountains. Staring over the landscape I pondered the frailty of life. Why God allowed things like this to happen. Wishing I had a way of being with my friends to comfort and mourn with them. And God impressed something on me so strongly.
The work we are doing here is of the utmost importance. Our conversations, our labor and our example to the nations can mean the difference between eternal life and eternal death. Life is only a breath in the span of history; it comes and goes in an instant. The knowledge of death must spur us to greatness in life. The person sitting on the street corner might not be there tomorrow. Are our lives going to express to him the sobriety of life? That what we believe and do in this life effects what happens after it is over?
It is important to grieve over death. Yet we are not to remain forever in mourning over death, but we are to REJOICE in the life we have been given. Seize the time that you have on this earth, every second of it.
Shannon was a believer and what she has now is a thousand times better than her life here. I praise God for how her life and death has and will bless so many people. Please pray for my friend Shannon's family, her boyfriend and her friends as they mourn their great loss.
