What is YOUR Expiration Date?

This was part of a post from "Stoicism Daily" (yes, once a Philosophy Professor, always a Philosophy Professor . . . )

"Memento Mori. “Remember that you will die.”

In "Meditations" Marcus Aurelius wrote “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” That was a personal reminder to continue living a life of virtue NOW, and not wait."

Not intended at all to be a morbid thought but clearly in line with the Judeo-Christian Scriptures as well. At every funeral I conduct, either in the memorial message or at the interment I remind the assembled mourners that life is both "brief and fragile". No matter how you evaluate the length of a person's life (and the youngest person I have buried was three, the oldest, 93.) everyone agrees that life is indeed brief, too brief by any standard you would care to apply. So, since that is true and since none of knows our "expiration date" (cottage cheese has it written clearly on the carton, humans not so much) we should all live with what the older merchants used to refer to as "short accounts". Keep it clean, keep it virtuous, keep it paid up and most of all prayed up.

And always keep in mind, “Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So, we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” (2 Corinthians 5:6–10, NIV84)