Yesterday, still recovering from the flu, I was at home when my wife called from church. She said, "Are you okay?"

I made sure I had understood her by using that ubiquitous clarifier, "What?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yes. Is that all? Where are you? Why do you ask?"

"I'm at church and I just felt like I should call and ask if you were okay."

Well, about that time I started doing two things. First, I asked myself if I really was okay. Did I feel lousy and just didn't know it? Was I bleeding from my eyeballs and could not see it? Was I okay? Well, I guess so. Second, I started wondering if something was going to happen to me. After all, she called from church and maybe she heard from God or someone walked up to her and said, "God told me your husband is going to fall down the stairs and break his neck."

I said to her, "Well should I be watching for something falling out of the sky and dropping on my head?"

"No. I was just thinking about you and wanted to see how you were doing."

Well, then I felt like an idiot. She was thinking of me. I told her, "I'm doing fine. Thanks for calling."

But, after we got off the phone with one another, and in the next hour or so, I noticed myself walking very carefully up and down those stairs. I would stop, put my hand out on the railing, and wonder, "Am I having a heart attack? If I fell suddenly on these stairs, that could leave a nasty gash. What would become of my 'stuff' if I died right now?"

What would become of my 'stuff' if I died right now? Indeed. What would become of me if I died right now? Ever ask yourself that?

For years, and it may still be going on, there was a ministry called 'Evangelism Explosion'. The idea was that people would go out and call on visitors to a church, or just contacts in a community, and once inside, somewhere prominent in the first few minutes of talking with someone in their home, the leader of the team would ask, "If you died today, would you go to heaven?"

For a lot of these people, the conversation was scripted. They knew what they wanted to say and where they wanted to go with people. I once had such a team visit me and while sitting in my living room, with all kinds of theological books, Greek and Hebrew Bibles, and other Christian literature on the shelves, and after asking me if I were a Christian (and hearing that I was), they still felt compelled to stick to the script: "Well, Phil, tell me, if you died today would you go to heaven?"

I hate it when Christian people cannot be real and speak spontaneously from who they actually happen to be, but that is another point.

If I died today… What would happen to my stuff? What stuff? There are a few things I'd like my children to have, and if I preceded my wife, I'd like her to have whatever she needed of mine to make her way still in this world, but I mean other 'stuff'. What would happen to my soul, my sense of self, and my awareness of being alive and conscious? That stuff.

Would I be conscious? Some people think that when you die, your soul goes to 'sleep'. It sleeps with your body in the grave, and then, when your body is resurrected, then your soul 'wakes up'. I don't believe that. Jesus told the thief on the cross, "Today, you will be with me in paradise."

I don't think Jesus meant he intended on dragging a sleeping corpse with him to the other side.

That evening I stood out on the balcony overlooking the ocean. The sun had gone down, but there was still some light in the sky. The clouds were highlighted in pinks, and one lone star stood out among them. I felt as if God had given me a picture of how it was between He and I. I am that one, lone star. I shine in his sky at sunset. He is mindful of me, and my death cannot separate us, for I am part of his artwork.

No one could paint something as beautiful, and I stood there in awe. I said, "Oh God, you are a wonderful artist, and I love your work." In moments like that my soul goes out to Him, my awareness is of Him. I thought of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and of Puritan theology that assert, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."

At that moment I felt my wife's arms around my waist and her body hugging up to me. I said, "Look at that; isn't it beautiful?"

She agreed. She is the star when she looks at that painting, as is each person who knows God by faith in Christ. That is what I believe, and on that balcony, I was glorifying God and enjoying the crap out of that moment.