I passed through a gravesite today.  A cemetery filled with the bodies of people who have died throughout the last century, some dating as far back as the latter part of the 19th century.  As I walked down quiet paths running amidst the markers I started thinking.  I walked by the graves of small children, and was filled with a deep sadness.  Tucked lovingly around the tombstones were tributes to the young lives that were gone.  A half-buried toy motorcycle here, a few bright rocks and seashells there.  I couldn't help but feel the pain of the parent, for a brief minute it was as if I could feel the tragedy in my own soul.  Having lost my father this same year, I did understand the pain of death, even when the promise of eternal life was there to console... but this sense of a parent losing a young child... a baby... was just too tragic to comprehend.

The longer I sat meditating on this, the more melancholy I grew... but as my mood deepened, so did a different realization.  These children who died... in the human sense their deaths were a tragedy, to be sure.  We, as Christians, however know that in their innocence, they have been received with open arms by the King of heaven, embracing forever the presence of the Lord God and His Son Jesus.  These children will forever live perfected in the light of the Son. 

Thinking about this, I realized that the true tragedy wasn't really in the loss of the child... not in the eternal sense.  The true tragedy lies in the parent who dies without giving their lives to Jesus... how horribly sad!  They have the opportunity to share in an eternal paradise that their baby will forever be a part of... they can forever fellowship, embrace and be a part of that baby's life in the eternal kingdom... but so many of these parents will never have that joy.  They'll never get a chance to spend eternity with their children in God's kingdom, they'll never see their baby recreated into a new, perfect, heavenly body.  They'll never get a chance to talk with, embrace, and share with that child.  Yes, there is no doubt about the ineffable sadness of losing a child here on earth in the physical sense, but its eternally more tragic to think of the parent dying apart from Jesus and spending an eternity in hell, when they could be spending an eternity in a paradise created by Almighty God, shared equally with the baby that they lost here on earth.  That my friends is true tragedy.

The shadows were deepening in the cemetery as I was walking along, and the feeling of melancholy didn't leave me.  I had stopped at one point, rather mindlessly gazing out over the sea of tombstones that lay before me... a sea that stretched out as far as my eyes could see in any direction.  The sheer number of the tombstones rather awed me.  I'm not typically the type to walk through a cemetery, but today was different.

Something about that vast expanse of tombstones was tugging at my heart, and as I stood there staring blankly around, I felt the Holy Spirit speak to my heart.  This was one of those rare times when there is no doubt at all that it was a word from the Lord, one of those special times when you know that the God of the universe had set up the entire affair just to remind me of what we're called to do.

I felt the Holy Spirit say to me, "Peter, do you see all these tombstones?  All of these people throughout the ages have died, some knowing Me and some rejecting Me. More and more are dying ever day, some knowing Me and some rejecting Me.  For those who rejected me, there is nothing but an eternity of separation from My presence and the anguish of the hell I created for the devil and his angels.  You need to remain faithful in the call that is upon your life as a child of God, being faithful in showing these people My love and the hope that comes from a relationship with Me.  I'm sending you to help these people, for that is your calling."

That struck such a chord within me.  I am called to help save these people from an eternity spent apart from God.  Me.  My responsibility.  I will have to give an account some day before the Jesus I love and when He asks me how faithful I was in fulfilling this call, what will my answer be?

Any person who believes in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior has this same commission given to them.  We who know the Way, who have seen the truth of the Word of God revealed to us... we exist on this earth not to take what we can from it.  We exist not to be the most successful businessperson, nor to have the biggest house or best boat.  We exist not to plan our IRA's and 401K's, not to plan for retirement, and not to simply get by until we die.  Surely these things are not in and of themselves wrong, however they're not what we are here for.

Simply put, we are here to share the love of Jesus we have with the people around us.  Nothing more, nothing less.  In the light of eternity, the only thing that will matter is your relationship with the King of Kings, and of how faithful you were in sharing with others the hope that you have within you. Nothing else is important, nothing else takes precedence.  This world is dying by the tens of thousands per day and most of these people do not know Jesus.  THAT, my friends, is one of the biggest tragedies in all of history.

Possibly the biggest tragedy, however, is the Christian who spends his or her entire life knowing the Lord, but never sharing that awesome gift with anyone else.  By that single act of selfishness, they might have directly or indirectly affected the lives of hundreds of people or better who might have come to know Jesus Christ personally and could have spent eternity with Him.  That Christian is going to have to stand before Jesus Christ and give an account of their life... and how horrible must the weight of that selfishness sit on that person when they see what their lack of effort caused in so many lives.

Friends, let us never have to worry about this in our own lives.  There are opportunities everywhere around us to plant seeds.  We don't always have to see someone become saved directly from our ministry to them, but we can LIVE Jesus Christ every day in our lives and SHOW them Jesus by our lives.  We can plant seeds of righteousness in some, and in others we can reap the harvest that someone else sowed.  We need to quit being selfish.  We need to quit being lazy.  We need to quit saying "Someone else is better at this than I am" or "I don't know what to say".  We need to break the spirit of complacency in us and go out and fight the good fight of faith and help as many people as we can find the awesome and eternal love of Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Anything less than this is a tragedy.