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.  Especially the prospect of your own 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 10, 1774.

We might as well face the facts.  Though, as Edward Young observed, “All men think all men mortal but themselves,” we are still forced by both observation and common sense to confess our own morality.  Should the Lord tarry his coming, death is an unavoidable, undeniable appointment we all must keep.  According to Hebrews 9:27, “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”  And again, the Psalmist poses the rhetorical question, “What man is there that lives that shall not see death?”  (Psalms 89:48.)

Yes, there is no doubt about it.  Whether we want to admit it or not, our days on earth are numbered.  The question is not, “Will I die?” but rather “Am I prepared?”