Your Appointment has been Rescheduled!

Have you ever heard those words? I am confident you have if you are anything like me.  It's never easy when we forget an appointment because it usually comes as a surprise.  We are subsequently embarassed and can't believe it happened.  This is because we assume something that is just simply not the case.  You know, the wrong day, the wrong calendar date, or even the wrong week or month.  By the time we see the error, its too late, we missed the appointment. 

In most areas of our lives, this can be corrected fairly easily.  We just pick up the phone and set a new date that fits our plans and desires.  Normally, we move forward and hardly give it a second thought.

Whether it’s the dentist, the doctor, the optometrist, or whoever, the missed appointment is not a life-changing problem.  However we need to be reminded of something very important about appointments.  We have at least one appointment in life that cannot be missed, changed, or rescheduled, and that is our appointment with death.

Now I know that sounds macabre and dreary, but don't dismiss it!  Everyone one of us, yes, everyone who has ever breathed the breath of life will have to attend this appointment, but more than that, each of us will have to keep the appointment as scheduled!  The Scripture says,

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgement.

 (Hebrews 9:27)

My dad was a pathologist who died when I was six years old.  It was Sunday, August 5, 1962, the very same day that Marilyn Monroe went into eternity.  Dad played golf at the Country Club, came home and collasped in the back yard with a massive heart attack.  While he lay on the ground waiting for an ambulance to arrive, he did two things.  He asked my stepmother what day it was.  She said, 

"Jeff why would you want to know what day it is?"  He simply replied, "Because I want to know the day of my death."  He then gave her his own funeral arrangements.  There would be no preacher, no Bible, and no preaching.  Instead, dad wanted his old jazz band to come and play at both the funeral home and then then at the cemetery, and that is exactly how it happened.

My dad was lucky in some ways.  Somehow he knew that his death was imminent.  He had time to prepare himself for that inevitable appointment.  How he used that time may have been eternally significant and eternally regretted if he died without a Savior.  

How about you?  Are you ready?  Do you know Jesus Christ and have you trusted his death on the cross as the payment for your own sin?  While passing a grave stone in a cemetary years ago as a young pastor I read these words on the face of a granite marker: "Take heed young man as you pass by, as you are now so once was I, as I am now, so you will be, prepare for death and eternity. "

Death is an appointment that we cannot change and will not miss!