It is this unexpectedness of death that should encourage us to take a second look. We should reconsider our pleasant denial, and admit that, yes, death might visit us as early as this week. The ancients learned from death, and we can learn from them. Every day those who die soon follow those who are already dead. One about to leave on a journey ought not to think himself far from one who went only two days before.
Life flows by like a flood.
A. Deathbed scrambling. Gen. William Nelson, a Union general in the Civil War, was consumed with the battles in Kentucky when a brawl ended up in his being shot, mortally, in the chest. He had faced many battles, but the fatal blow came while he was relaxing with his men. He was caught fully unprepared. He never had time as an adolescent or young man.