I wonder if you know Ida. I wonder if you know Ida as well as I do. You know ... if IDA only known then what I know now...If IDA turned right instead of left...If IDA only listened to that advice I was given. I know Ida well and sometimes I believe too well.
Here’s the issue: as a parent, I don’t want my boys to get to know IDA too intimately. I don’t want my friends to know her or my colleagues. They say that hindsight is 20/20 and adversity is a stepping stone to knowledge and while I recognize the truth in both those expressions, the last thing I want on my conscience is someone asking me, “Why didn’t you tell me, or warn me?
In the more benign things of life, my children ignore me. “Where a coat – it’s cold out!” How can I possibly expect anyone else to listen to common sense when I never did? My child shivering on the way home from school is something I can pooh-pooh away. A friend getting pulled over because his tail light is still burnt out ... expensive lesson to learn but hey you can only “suggest” so much.
Lately however I cannot help but see what is going on in the world and think to myself – it’s coming – the contractions are growing closer and closer together. In all honesty, before I became a Christian I never really gave eternity a thought. I assumed that because I believed that God existed I would end up in heaven. I know differently now. And while there is a sense of urgency – I believe – I can’t really stand on a street corner with a sandwich board hanging over my shoulder that read, “Accept Christ as your Saviour before it’s too late!”
I feel compelled to do something more than what I’m doing now. The question is: what? What do I do? What can I do? I know that I’m not anyone’s saviour but I am a sower and I guess I’m questioning whether I’m sowing enough. It’s not as if I’m planting wheat and I know how deep into the soil to plant.
This fear of knowing that people I know and care about might not end up in heaven sometimes consumes my thoughts. I don’t want to meet Jesus and say, “If only IDA realized – if only IDA known.” Are you ready?
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son,” John 3:16-18.
