The internet has boundless potential to surprise. Each week we stumble across bizarre, thought-provoking or just plain weird sites. My favourite find of the last few days (courtesy of an evangelistic talk given at my church pub quiz) is The Death Clock. Now, it’s probably fair to say that this is not a site to visit if you are already feeling melancholy! But how it works is this … you type in your age, gender and a couple of indicative health facts and the death clock calculator guestimates the date of your death. Then (and this is most intriguing bit) it calculates how many seconds you have left to live, starts a clock and you can quite literally see your life ticking away …
I’m not for one moment suggesting that the clock is accurate. In fairness, the owner of the site isn’t making that claim either! But it’s interesting to reflect on the emotions that seeing that ticking clock, that ever decreasing number of seconds to live, can engender. As I type this post my life is slipping away:
1,115,832,634
1,115,832,633
1,115,832,632
1,115,832,631 …
It’s a stark reminder of what is true for all of us. We only have a limited amount of time before our heart stops (or Jesus returns) and everything changes.
The burning question is what are we going to do with our remaining seconds? Are we going to fritter them away? Work ourselves to the bone? Pursue riches? Or empty learning? As the writer of Ecclesiastes tried and found wanting. Or are we going to join with him in saying “fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13)?
“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Matthew 9:38
Tick, tock, tick, tock…
