WHY?

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon and evening with my Father in the ER of a local Hospital. The medical staff quickly discovered that my Father was in need of surgery. While we waited for a bed, our conversation touched on many things, one, of which, was my Father's tour of duty in Korea.

With tears in his eyes he told me of being positioned ahead of the front line at an outpost on "Heartbreak Ridge". There were wounded soldiers that needed brought back to the line. My Father volunteered to go after the wounded. While he was getting a stretcher from the medic shack, another man, who was known for his disbelief in God, grabbed the stretcher out of my Father's hands.

The man made it out to the forward bunker and was sitting between two other soldiers when a enemy shell took his life while the two others were un-touched.

While lying on his hospital gurney, my Father asked me, "Why? How could a shell hit him and not touch the two men beside him?" I knew what my father meant. He was asking, Why the man, who took his place on the assignment, had to die? My Father carried that man's body back to the front line.

Rather than turn this post into a debate of belief vs disbelief, let me just write about the importance of being ready to meet God. If that man had not grabbed the stretcher out of my Father's hands....

My Father's life was spared for a purpose and only God knows the full extent of that purpose. Who are the 'unbelievers" that we are in contact with? Knowing that they may be called to stand before God in the very next moment should light a fire under us to show the love of Jesus to them.

Do we?

If not. Why?