Last Wednesday morning, I rushed to a local hospital to see a brother in the Lord who is in a critical condition. At the lobby, I ran into his son and chat with him a little bit. His son told me that he just talked to his father and his father is very peaceful. As I was not sure whether his father is still ok or not, I went up to see his father. Entered the patient room, there was no one around, I called the brother’s name several times and he didn’t respond. So, I went out to check around.  An attending nurse in the next door confirmed that my friend passed away about 3 hours ago. I realize that I was too late!

A few weeks ago, my daughter was in her Fall break and she went down to NYC with her friends. At the end of day, she was trying to get back from NYC by train and she wanted me to pick her up at the local train station. No sooner had her scheduled time passed, she called me and said that she just missed the train, even though she ran all the way to the platform. It was too late! She ended up has to wait for another hour in the Grand Central station in order to catch the next train. And, I have to wait another hour too 🙂

In our life journey, situation like this – It was too late – may not be foreign to many of us. However, there is always a consequence accompanied with it when we are late for something. In the case of my visitation to the brother in the hospital, my lateness makes me miss the opportunity to see him the very last time. In my daughter’s case, her lateness makes her and I wasted another hour of waiting. This lets me think of a story that I read long time ago. The story is like this:

Some time ago, there is a couple. Both of the husband and wife are scientists. The wife, however, has a habit of lateness.

They are developing a medicine that could revive a person from coma ‘within an hour’. As the medicine is near the stage of testing, they realize that they need to have a guinea pig to test it out. The wife agrees to become the one. Thus, the husband gave his wife a drug that would put her into coma. After his wife went into coma, the husband immediately injects the new medicine into his wife and waits. As an hour has passed, his wife is still sleeping. Two hours later, his wife is still not waking up. He starts to panic and thinks that their medicine is NOT effective and his wife would never be able to come back. At this time, he is completely disheartened.  He took a large amount of sleeping pills and committed suicide himself.  Another hour later, his wife finally woke up and saw her husband lie down there without any breath.

The story illustrates the consequence of “lateness” could mean a “life and death” situation.  In this world, God gave each one of us an opportunity to live and we are responsible for our acts. Therefore, an important question that we have to ask ourselves is “Am I late for the kingdom of God?” This is critical because it is about whether we can receive God’s promise or not. In the case of my visitation to the hospital, I was disappointed for my lateness; however, I am confident that I can see the brother again in the future because he is in Christ and is NOT late for the kingdom of God.

My dear friends, the time has come, as the Lord Jesus indicated. He said, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news! 日期滿了 ，神的國近 了 。你們當悔改 ，信福音 ！(Mark 1:15)” Apostle Paul in Athens also said, “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent世人蒙昧無 知的時候 ，神並不監察 ，如今卻吩咐各處的人都要悔改 。(Acts 17:30)” Therefore, let us be aware of the time has come and we don’t want to be late for the kingdom of God since the timing is a matter of “life and death”.