August 28, 2025 Devo

“You have one year to live.” If you were told that today by your doctor, how would your life change? How would you spend that year? What would you finally do that you’ve been putting off doing? How would it impact the way you treat your spouse or kids? How diligent would you become about your relationship with God? What would change about the way you spend your time, spend your money, or spend your energy? What silly things that stress you out would you suddenly stop getting so worked up about?
What relationships would you try to make right? What wrongs would you try to correct? Who would you make sure that you said, “I love you,” to? Who would you forgive? If you had one year to live, how much more clearly do you think life would come into view? What kind of person would you want to become by the time that year was over? The biggest question of all: “Why are you waiting until you only have a year left to do these things?”
Hopefully, you have more than a year left. But here’s the deal. You never really know. That’s the point this psalm makes. Most people live to be 70. Some make it to 80 and beyond. I have several in my congregation over 90! But then again, I’ve buried people much, much younger. The point is, we don’t get to determine WHEN we will die, but we do get to choose HOW we will live.
Ask around and you’ll discover that life is short, no matter how many years you get. Those of us who are older were young like YESTERDAY. And though we can’t go back and do any of those years over, we can do something pretty amazing. We can start living NOW, like this is the only year we have!
So go back over those questions. Be ruthlessly honest as you ask yourself each one. Then ask God to help you change to live THIS YEAR as though this were your LAST YEAR. Ask Him for the wisdom to live it RIGHT…to live it passionately, purposefully, and with a sense of priority. That way, one day, many years from now, when the doctor says, “You only have one year to live,” you’ll be able to smile. And you’ll say, “That’s okay, Doc. I’ve been living this last year now for a long, long time.” And when your day to die finally comes, you won’t be in a panic. Because when you live life right, all you have left to do when you get to the end is just die. And that’s a great way to go. That’s God’s Word for you today.