‘If you had only six months to live, how would you spend that time?’ I have had occasion to ponder this question several times since I was in my mid-thirties. The first occasion was at a retreat to relax overnight with the staff of KGK (the Christian student movement in Japan), the organization I was working for at the time.
I had been reflecting on my life up to that point, the dreams of my youth, and various experiences that had come my way. I was seeking to discover the ‘desire of my heart,’ and I thought about the six-months question from the perspective of how my heart’s desire might be fulfilled.
One day five or six years later, I found an old notebook while I was cleaning out and reorganizing my bookcase. I leafed through the pages and I discovered the completely forgotten ‘desire’ I had written about at that time. As I read it, my heart was filled with amazement and I was profoundly moved. I had already changed jobs and was working as a staff member for IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) representing East Asia. The focus of the new work that I was doing with IFES was exactly what I had written in my notebook about my heart’s desire. There was a period of about two years before I changed jobs when I felt uncertain and a measure of anxiety about doing so. Perhaps it was because the new job was a perfect fit for my heart’s desire that the decision eventually seemed very natural to me.
The second time I considered the question I was in my mid-forties. I was at the IFES East Asia Graduates Conference in Indonesia. The last day of the conference was on New Year’s Eve and as the last part of the program, the participants were asked to consider, ‘If you had only six months to live, how would you spend it? Where? With whom? Doing what? Then we broke up into pairs and took time to share our thoughts. At that time, too, I examined my innermost desires, taking into consideration the actual circumstances of my life and sought for my answer to the question.
Six months later one part of my desire that had seemed unreachable at that time was fulfilled in the completion of the manuscript for the book I was writing, With Christians In East Asia. Another part was fulfilled in being able to continue the work with IFES that following year although I had felt it was impossible. The eight years we spent in Singapore from 1986-1994 were years of blessing for my family and myself that we will never forget.
One week to the day before we left Singapore, SumieYokouchi, a missionary colleague with whom I had enjoyed close personal fellowship, paid a visit to our home. Since my wife and I had enjoyed a very warm and open relationship with her during our last year in Singapore, we were thankful for the time to bid her an affectionate farewell. I shared with her about my experiences in answering the question and urged her to think about it also.
I learned later that she had taken this suggestion to heart. Two or three months after our conversation, her physician actually told her that she probably had only six months to live. When I visited her in the hospital in Japan, she quietly said to me, ‘I really was told I had only six months!’
She was called home to be with the Lord Jesus almost exactly six months later. The morning of the day she died, she used a cellular phone to call me and tell me herself that her time had come. Our fellowship that evening was our last here on earth. I became aware once more of the preciousness and the significance of six months of life; no, of each day of life we are given.
Pondering this question once again now in my late 50’s, I don’t have a clear answer as yet, but I am aware that it is different than it was before. Perhaps it is because it seems that God’s calling for my life has become clearer. Perhaps it is because I have become conscious of a calling that is deeper than just God’s will and guidance for marriage, work, and what I am to do and where I am to do it. It is because I have begun to consider the question in the light of the question of what the God who created me desires me to be, what kind of person he wants me to become; in other words in light of the question of my calling in the sense of my very existence as to why I was born, why I am given life.
Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do it. (Psalm 37:4-5)
These words have taken on new meaning for me as they speak to my heart.