As the day finishes I return to my younger days.
In childhood I remember the end of the day. We were encouraged to pray. There was a simple prayer — "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."
I do not want to be presumptuous. Neither do I want to disavow what God has said. In these past years I have immersed myself more and more in Scripture. I desire my thought patterns to be conformed to the thought patterns of God.
I do not wish to be overconfident. But, my reading leads me to believe that those who wholeheartedly follow God are destined to eternal life. I do waver some days in my commitment, but my heart is constantly drawn back to God. I feel a tug that will not let me stay away long!
Towards that end, I read my childhood pray as one of hopeful and confident entreaty. During the evening and throughout the day, God will keep my soul (the word for soul encompasses the whole of my being — body, emotion, mind — the seen and the unseen!). And if I die — and as I have watched Christians die in this past while — I trust God to grab ahold of them and of me. And so, I shall see Jesus face to face.
For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain – to be absent from the body is to be present with my Lord!