You aren't guaranteed the rest of today. You aren't guaranteed tomorrow, or another Friday night out, or another Spring Break. The plans that you might've had construed and meticulously planned out might come crashing down all around you. The future that you had so been looking forward to could come to a screeching halt, or turn on a dime in a second.

It's so easy for us to turn a blind eye to the random, terrible things life throws at people. You hear sad stories on the news every day: someone else died of cancer, another person lost their job, someone down the street just got in a fatal car accident. Hearing about daily horrors is no foreign subject. Our mistake in this is getting too comfortable with the idea of tragedy. As a society we should not grow accustomed to the horrors we hear on the news and we should not let the commonalities of disease, death, or accidents harden our hearts or minds, either.

It is true that life continues, that the Kingdom of Heaven is far better than life here on Earth, but it is still difficult to take comfort in that fact for the heart that mourns a loss. With the horrors that we so often hear about in the news or in social media, it becomes easy for us to forget that tragedy can strike anyone, at any time. In ignorance we assume it will never be us, that it will always happen to someone else's father, or aunt, or child, but in reality one can never be certain.

I urge everyone to be grateful for the time they have here on Earth every single day. Hug your loved ones, never suppress a generous thought about them, and never take for granted what you assume you'll always have. To live is the greatest privilege given to us by God, and it is a gift that can be taken away in the blink of an eye. Though I can hardly fathom what it will be like to one day enter the gates of Heaven, I am still certain that appreciating life is the least we can do for the One who gave His so that we might live. Cherishing every day should be a reflex, not a forced reminder. Love the people God gave you, because one day He will need them back.

"For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death." 1 Corinthians 15:25-26