if this present were the world's last night

For the last few months, my only scary dreams have been about the church music getting messed up or my teeth falling out.

Until Thursday night.

I dreamt that I was at the law office after having been absent for a while. They'd remodeled and added an upper floor, and somebody was giving me a tour. When we got upstairs, there was a roomful of people sitting at their desks, silent. I realized after a minute that they were all holding their breath. Figuring that there was something bad in the air, I held my breath too and started for the stairs.

On the staircase, and everywhere on the bottom floor, there were people huddled up against the walls, obviously waiting for some impending disaster. I realized that something was really wrong.

Really, really wrong. I knew, for a fact, that we were about to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb.

I decided to leave the complex and go home instead of dying at the office. On my way out, I found my uncle crouched down on the floor in the hall. I stopped and asked him what was happening, and he said "President Bush came back and gave a speech today. He said that because of slavery and capital punishment, we deserve this."

I stopped and looked at all the people crouched up in the hall, and thought about all the people inside the office and upstairs, and for a minute I was surprised that my uncle wasn't using his last moments to tell them about Jesus. Then I realized that I might as well tell them about Jesus.

But I really really didn't want to die there in the office without seeing my family, so I decided to go home.

After a while, other people started going home, too. Nobody knew when the nuclear bomb was going to go off, so they all decided to go about their regular lives in the meantime.

A few things bothered me about this dream.

One is that it's not a hypothetical situation. We are all going to die. Nobody knows when. And those of us who know the Word of God understand how serious that is.

The misery of a nuclear bomb lasts, at most, for a lifetime. The misery of hell is eternal.

Am I huddled up against a wall in fear? Am I hurrying past tens of dying people so that I can get home quicker? Am I living my regular life just like nothing is ever going to happen?