In our busy lives, few of us get a chance to rehearse the would-be events of our last hours on earth. We tend to live as if our death-bed experience will come later than everybody’s.

Yet every once in a while, something awakens us from that earthly slumber. For many in Uganda, it was the smoke-laden images and ambulance sirens from last week’s bombings in our capital, Kampala.

As I watched the CCTV reruns, I pondered the unfortunate plight of the innocent who may have been walking to work, only for the pavement below their leg to sink into the ground as the explosion lifted debris all around them.

More than we’d like to admit, the day’s pre-explosion experiences from a CCTV perspective, illustrate our own pre-death experiences so accurately. Our demise often comes with the surprise of an explosive, one step forward and the debris of this life, let alone the reality of the next, is soon swirling before us.

The pre-death experience and response as described in Jesus’ Luke 12:13-22 parable is telling. He embarked on life-insuring construction projects, tearing down and building larger, depositing and anticipating ease.

God’s response to him – by all accounts – is a bombshell to many of us who tend to go about our days the same way, burning out for events far ahead, while our next breath, and heart-status before God, are not looking like anything “rich towards God” (16:22).

“You fool, this very night your life will be taken away from you.” And notice the probing question in the rebuke that follows, “and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (16:20)

Ofcourse God is neither discouraging financial wisdom nor industriousness for believers. If anything, he’s the one who advises them to “look to the ants and be wise”.“ (Proverbs 6:6) – modeling wise stewardship with material resources. (Luke 19:12)

But all Jesus does here is put the ruler’s plans side by side with his misty life, basically saying.

Plan this and plan that, get busy indeed but remember, you have no control over the next hour, and the life you assume in making your wonderful plans is too temporary to carry their weight. More than you think, the future you are strategizing for is way out of your control.

Jesus wants the man who asked about his brother’s inheritance (vs 13) to literally practice “staring death in the face”, as a path to becoming “rich towards God” (21) and unanxious (22).

Oh that our daily grind may benefit from such reminders. That we will carry out our academics and garage visits, and counseling calls, parenting and boardroom pursuits, insurance plans, and land agreements, everything – with this eternal view of things.

And by doing so we will learn to practice staring death in the face. After all, none of us can tell when life’s debris will come tumbling down on us, in God’s sovereign providence.

Oh Lord that you would quicken us to live with such eternal awareness!