I Can’t Die Yet!

“I Can’t Die Now”

Just a few weeks ago, the nation was stunned by the sudden death of Senator Lindsey Graham. In the hours before he passed, he reportedly joked with someone who urged him to seek medical help: “I can’t die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out, and do Israeli-Saudi normalization.”

He never made it to the next day.

That single sentence lingers because it feels so familiar. Most of us carry our own version of that list. “I can’t die yet—I still need to finish the project… see the grandkids grow up… make things right with that person… get my spiritual life in better order.” We speak as if tomorrow is guaranteed and our plans are firmly in our hands.

This Sunday we will open God’s Word to a story Jesus told about a man who thought the same way. In Luke 12, a successful farmer looks at a bumper crop and begins making long-term plans: bigger barns, years of ease, a comfortable future. Then God interrupts with four sobering words: “This very night your life will be demanded from you.”

The parable is not just about money. It is about the dangerous assumption that we control the calendar. It is about the difference between storing up things for ourselves and being “rich toward God.”

Death does not wait for us to clear our desks or complete our agendas. It rarely arrives when the list is finished. The question is not whether we will leave unfinished business—we all will. The question is whether we will leave this life prepared for the only appointment that truly matters.

As you prepare for worship this week, take a quiet moment to consider your own “I can’t die now” list. What sits at the top? What have you been postponing under the quiet assumption that there will always be more time?

Come ready to listen. Come ready to let Scripture examine the plans we make and the security we place in them. Come ready to hear again the good news that the most important work has already been finished—not by us, but by Christ.

We will walk carefully through the parable, look at supporting passages that call us to number our days and hold our plans loosely, and consider what it means to live ready—neither anxious nor presumptuous, but rich toward God.

Death will call. It always does. May it find us already belonging to the One who conquered it.

See you Sunday.