‘Get Busy Living’ After The Manner of Jesus Christ

TheDiscipleMD

It was 1978 and I had just gotten married. I was going to school at a university, working a part-time job, and living in a mortuary free of rent. The free rent came with the responsibility of helping to clean and watch over the morgue a couple of nights a week. My wife and I lived in a downstairs apartment under the morgue. Between school and working I was gone a lot of the time. However, I will always remember my wife telling me that the owner would talk about who in the area was sick, and what the possibility was of them “passing on” to the other side. Kind of like a list of “dying” potential clients! Being young at the time, I thought it seemed rather callous that the owner would talk that way. It also struck me, in a morbid way, as rather humorous. Now, many years later, as a business man myself, I can understand why he said what he said. His business thrived on the “dying,” and without it, he had no life.

I guess it can be said that we all are in the “business of dying” as soon as we take our first breath. Spencer W. Kimball once said:

“Yes, men die-all men die. Millions have died unheard, never praised and unknown. The question is, when they die have they fulfilled the measure of their mortal creation. “(“Jesus of Nazareth,” Tambuli, Dec 1981).

There is of course one who is the giver of life and who helps us “fulfill” the measure of our creation. It is the Savior. Again quoting President Kimball:

“Christ died. Ah! Here is the great death that is significant. He made atonement for our sins to open the way for our resurrection to point the way to our perfection of life, to show the way to exaltation. He died purposefully, voluntarily. His birth was humble, his life was perfect, his example was compelling; his death opened doors for us, and every one was offered every good gift and blessing.”

Jesus understood early in life that he “needed to be about his father’s business”. (Luke 2: 49). His father’s business, or work, is “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39). But there is another who is in the business of “eternal death.” That would be Lucifer! He has, from the beginning, made a list of “dying” potential clients, much like an undertaker. We are all on that list, but we don’t have to become his clients. If we rely on the Lord and follow His servants, the prophets, we will not find ourselves in the arms of the ultimate Mortician.

There is no escaping the physical death. But we do not have to be delivered up to Lucifer, the “eternal undertaker”, if we chose the right.

From what I could tell, “the business of dying”, seemed to be quit profitable for my friend the Mortician. And from what I see in world events, the “business of spiritual death” seems to be rewarding the “father of lies” quit handsomely. The world is awash in “spiritual death” and Satan is rejoicing in his accomplishments. To quote a famous line out of a movie, we should “get busy living, or get busy dying” (Shawshank Redemption). In the context of my message, “get busy living” means to follow Jesus Christ because He is the “bread of life.”

Like my landlord the Mortician, Satan also thrives on the “dying”, because without it, he too has no life. He is a parasite that will, in the end, suck the soul of all that is good and righteous. He will leave us as spiritual “corpses”; devoid of all that is Godly! Let us put our faith and trust in the Lord. Let us “get busy living” after the manner of Jesus Christ, our Savior.

 

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