There’s a new book out in Christian Books stores that might be worth your time and energy. It’s written by a pastor (Kerry Shook) in the Houston area. The title of the book is “One Month to Live.” The idea for the book actually came out of a challenge he gave to his staff at his church and then ultimately to the church where he leads.

He asked them to make a commitment to live for a 30 day period like it was the last 30 days they would ever live. He wanted to see how that would alter their decisions, their values, and their actions. If you only had 30 days to live, would you live differently? That question isn’t a bad question for any of us to ask. In fact, it leads to a series of questions we need to ask. For example, if we only had 30 days left in this life, would we express our love for our family and friends differently? Would we seek to restore some relationships that had been damaged? Would we forgive some grudges we’re holding? Would we ask others to forgive us? Would we stop doing some things that are frivolous and pointless? If you only had 30 days left, would we complain about less? Would we express gratitude more? Would we more emphatically ask people about their eternity and the decisions they need to make? Would we pray differently? Would we seek God more regularly? Would we take more risks for the sake of the Gospel? Would our priorities be different? What would change?

The truth is (outside of particular diagnosis and timetables) most of us don’t know when the final 30 day clock starts to tick. For all we know it may have already started and we’ve got one less minute than we had before we started to read this blog.