NEVER KNOW

The death of a 21 year old girl is under investigation. Previously unknown health issues are in question. The girl, Ariane Patterson, was in religion class at her university when she died. Earlier in the day, being her birthday, she tweeted a thank you to God for “another year of life.” Ariane was a college senior majoring in religious studies.

I suppose when it’s your time it’s your time. If being a “religious studies” major doesn’t keep one from dying young, you might think that being in religion class when death came calling might. If neither of those worked, you might think that tweeting to God a thank you for another year of life earlier in the day, on your 21^st birthday, would. Once again though, death proves to strike anyone at any time.

Death is hard to face, especially when it occurs to the young. We all know that we will one day die but it’s something that we usually don’t spend too much time thinking about unless we are looking at life insurance or enduring a life threatening illness. We sure don’t want to dwell on it as it is hard to truly live while thinking about dying. Yet, the unfortunate situation of Ariane reminds us that we could be next and we should always keep our spiritual house in order.

Our faith is one that teaches that we should look forward to our time with our Lord and Savior. Yet, God instilled in us a feverish desire to live. In fact, all of our bodily functions are geared to heal and fight life-threatening paradigms. Even so, we are pretty assured that anyone reading this blog will not be alive in 100 years from now. Our time will come soon enough. While we hope to live a full lifetime, we will be dead for an eternity. In that respect, life in eternity is what we are really preparing for. I hope we are all well prepared because as Ariane tragedy teaches us, one never knows.