What we do in the dash...

In the March 2010 issue of Reader's Digest I found a article about a Navy Chaplain named Terry Roberts. I was kinda speed-reading-just-skipping-over-a-lot-of-it when I got to the last paragraph and was struck by what he said: "At memorial services I that each gravestone has a few things on it: a date of birth, a dash, and a date of death. Well, that dash is our life. We don't know how long or short it's going to be, whether we'll live to 91 or 21. But it's what we do with the dash that really matters."

As I considered that I realize just what that really means. It isn't the day that we are born, or the day that we die, that really matters. It's what we do in that dash that counts. People may never hear about it, you might not do something that changes the world, but it is what we do in the dash that really counts. Even if it forever remains the dash on your gravestone...it has got to count to us and to our family and friends. Most of all it needs to count to God!