Worthy Christian Devotional – Daily Devotion » You can't escape it!

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1 Corinthians 15:55-58 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

Yesterday, I received word that one of our volunteers passed away. When I read about it, I was completely shell shocked, and filled with mixed emotions: joy because my brother had gone home, grief from the personal loss and the sorrow of his loved ones, and sadness for the loss of a valuable volunteer.

Death has a way of raising our spiritual temperature and quickening us to re-evaluate life…especially to ask, "Am I doing all that I can do?" This sad event reminded me of the story of the origin of the Nobel Prize.

Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, awoke one morning in 1888, shocked to discover his own obituary in the morning news. The newspaper had mistakenly printed the story about Alfred, instead of his brother, who had just passed away. As he read his own epitaph, the story of the "Dynamite King", the great industrialist who made an immense fortune from explosives — Alfred Nobel was rudely awakened to the fact that the world viewed him as a merchant of death! The mistake was not wasted on him. Rather, it served as his wake up call!

As he read his obituary with horror, Alfred resolved to make clear to the world his understanding of the true meaning and purpose of his life. So he used his immense fortune to create a foundation which would promote and embody his ideal for world peace…and he is now remembered, not as the "Dynamite King", but the creator of what we know now as the "Nobel Peace Prize."

Let's allow this little message to be our wake up call. Let's re-evaluate our lives, look within…and ask ourselves, "Are we truly doing all that we can be doing for the Lord?" Because when this life is finally past, and our deeds are all recorded in the "Books", only what was done with and for the Lord, will last…forever!