They were all people I had known for a long time. They were honest, decent people -- people who had loved me and treated me kindly.
I miss them all.
If you live long enough, you will realize that kind people are few and far between. So when the Lord brings kind people across my path, I do my best to keep them on my radar.
Good people are hard to find, and I hate to let any of them go from my life. But death, being no respecter of persons, will take them away in a heartbeat.
What bothers me most of all, besides the loss of their companionship, is that I don't know if I will see many of them again. To the best of my knowledge, few of those people -- good people, people with kind hearts -- few of them had ever bent their knee before the God of heaven.
The Bible teaches clearly that no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born again. Unless a person has surrendered his life to Jesus and obtained forgiveness through His blood, there is no entry into heaven. Only Jesus can impart the gift of eternal life. Apart from Him, there is no hope for salvation.
Few of the people I loved could testify that they had given their hearts to Jesus and found forgiveness for their sins. Few of them, good people though they were, humanly speaking, were ready for eternity, at least as far as I knew from discussions I had with them while they still walked this earth.
Of course, there is always the hope, and always the chance, that someone nearing their final hours could experience a death-bed conversion, and depart from this life into eternal glory. That is always a possibility, but not really very likely in most cases. Generally speaking, people who harden their hearts towards God find it more difficult to come to Him after so many years of telling themselves that they can make it on their own.
So, while I hope for the best for so many of my departed friends and relatives, I cannot be certain of their eternal destiny.
This saddens me more than words can convey. I dread to think what a godless eternity would be like. I dread to think that someone I love could be facing eternal darkness, all because they were too stubborn to kneel before the Creator of the universe and ask His forgiveness before it was too late.
Please listen, my friends who are still alive -- death is too late. You need to give your life to the Lord NOW, while it is still within your power to do so. There is no guarantee that you will have tomorrow.
So I keep hoping for the best. I pray that there was a last-minute decision by my friends to surrender their hearts to Jesus. It is a slim hope, but I often remind myself about the thief on the cross, who repented just hours before his death, and lived to hear Jesus tell him, "Today you will be with me in paradise."
I wish I could somehow know if they had made peace with God in their final hours. I wish I could know where they are.
