Don't take a minute for granted

This morning I got on Facebook and saw a puzzling status update from a girl I went to college with:

(Name) is thankful that I wasn't at the gym tonight. Thank the Lord I was with my family instead. Please keep praying for all who were effected by this tragedy.

I had no idea what she was talking about, until I read this article on Foxnews about the murder of 4 people last night at an LA Fitness club outside of Pittsburgh.

It's a stunning and tragic reminder that we do not know what the next hour of our lives will bring. These words from James written 2000 years ago are relevant every day of our lives:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”

Life is a mist; we don't know when the Lord will not will that we 'live and do this or that'.

So take nothing for granted today, and make the most of every good gift that we have in this unstable world we live in. And for those of you who know Christ, what a great opportunity to praise Him for comfort that we have in knowing that for the believer, death is not dying.