Live Like We're Dying

Allow me to bare my soul for a moment....

     Last night I had a dream. In the dream I was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given 2-4 weeks to live. The cancer was so advanced that chemo (or any other treatment) would only extend my life by a few weeks. I opted for no treatments so as to live my last days with a semblance of normalcy. Immediately after leaving the doctor's office I went to a friends house and told him that I would die soon. I bawled my eyes out and he comforted me. Once I had calmed down he asked me if there was anything he could do.

Let me side bar here, I have thought about the things that I would want to do if I knew I was going to die soon and at the top of the list is have sex.

So, in my dream I basically propositioned him... And then backtracked and explained how unfair that was to him since sex is more than just a physical act and bonds the two participants to each other. In other words, he would feel my death in a way no one else could. I went on to tell him that I was conflicted and knew that no matter what I shouldn't have sex outside the confines of marriage. He offered to get married... I thought about it for a second and then realized that wouldn't be alright either because marriage is an institution developed by God to better further His kingdom and marrying a non-Christian at the very end of my life solely to have sex without the guilt of fornication was not a solution. 

 His response was to encourage me to seek God's will for my last days and to look for ways to further His kingdom through my situation. After that the dream skipped to after my funeral when my sister found an unpublished blog post that explained why I didn't tell everyone that I was dying, thanked my friend for not taking advantage of me and instead pointing me in the opposite direction so that my last days could shine bright for Christ, and encouraged him to return to his Heavenly Father.

This dream reminded me that, while most of us don't have cancer or any diagnoses that tells us we'll die in a month, we are still terminal. Every one of us is dying. We don't know the day or the time, it could be tomorrow or ten years from now, but our death is inevitable. And even when we're at death's door as Christians we are still called to further God's kingdom and point others to Him. Even after we're gone our lives, our legacy should be pointing others to Christ.

 With this in mind, why is it so hard to live like we're dying?