Three years ago this morning, I sat by my beloved’s bedside in the hospice residence and read to her from the Gospel of Matthew, and after Jesus declared the two greatest commandments, I noticed she was no longer breathing. I glanced across the room at the clock; it was 7:20 a.m.
Something profoundly shifted inside me the moment Carol Jean died, a shift that had never occurred before when death visited my loved ones.
From that minute, I have wanted to tell people to savor every moment they can share with the people they love, especially their special someone.
I have wanted to scream at people who wish death on their enemies.
Having found another soulmate by a miracle of God, I have made a point to remind myself how precious our times together are. I try never to fail to tell her I love her.
All things pass; it’s a given. All lives end.
While life is, embrace it. Appreciate it, protect it, love it, live it, and worship the Creator who made it all.
The songwriter said, and I fully believe, “Only God has the right to decide who’s to live and die.” The day comes for all of us, and when it does, you will want to know you loved as much as you could, for as much of the time as you could.
And don’t you dare wish harm on another human being. What an arrogant waste of energy; what a contemptuous and contemptible way to treat the Creator’s work.
And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
