Sometime back I was given a business card which had a picture of a hearse on one side.  The caption read, “You may tie your shoestrings in the morning, but the undertaker may untie them before night.”

I know.  You don’t have to say it.  You don’t like to think about death.  The thought leaves you cold.  You view death as morbid, distasteful at best.  If the thought of dying makes you feel somewhat uneasy, you are in royal company.  Louis XV, King of France, feared death so intensely he decreed that the word should never be spoken in his presence.  He further ordered that every effort should be made to avoid his seeing a place or monument that might remind him of death.  And yet, for all his fear, Louis XV died of smallpox on May 13, 1774.

We might as well be honest and face the facts.  Though, as Edward Young observed, “All men think all men mortal but themselves,” we are still forced by observation and common sense to confess our own mortality.  Should the Lord tarry his coming, death is an unavoidable and undeniable appointment we will all keep.  “It is appointed unto all men once to die, but after this the judgment.”  (Hebrews 9:27.)

There is no doubt about it.  Our days on earth are numbered.  The question is not, “Will I die?” but rather, “Am I prepared?”  Think about it.