Yesterday I had opportunities to notice clocks, three of them, as a matter of fact. The first one was directly in my line of sight. As I lay on the gurney in the back of the Canton FD ambulance, one Paramedic taking an EKG and the other starting an IV, both working quietly, with just an occasional short question. I was calmer than I expected I might be. I kept my eyes closed most of the time because of the pain. Every time I would open them, I saw the clock, mounted just above the rear doors, a black background with white numerals and hands, probably luminescent. I watched the clock for a short time and was reminded of the verse I always whisper in prayer whenever I wind my pocket watch: “Lord teach (me) to number my days… that I may gain wisdom” Psalm 90:12
Some time later, I looked up from the hardest, narrowest table upon which I have ever tried to get comfortable. Now, as I am waiting on a heart catheterization and I look over, on the wall just above me, in eyesight for the doctor running the test were two clocks. The first was just like the one in the ambulance, perhaps a bit bigger. A regular clock, that tells the time. The second clock was a clock that I supposed measured off the hours as it ran beginning with a 1just to the right of the top position and ended with a 60 at the top. My guess is that it is to time the exact length of time the procedure is taking, or something like that. Again, my mind went to the verse in Psalm 90. But this time, another thought came with it.
It was not a fearful thought at all. I was not worried about the procedure, though not looking forward to it. The embarrassment I had already undergone by the two nurses who were so professionally trying to get things ready and keep me at ease at the same time, did a great job; but some things are just embarrassing. So it wasn’t that kind of discomfort either. My chest pain had subsided with the three nitroglycerin pills, four baby aspirin, a nitro patch and four units of morphine; but WOW! did I have a headache and the two by four I was laying on wasn’t helping my back any! Karin was keeping her cold hands on my forehead to ease the headache until the procedure began. The thought that came to me was just that, a thought, nothing more.
Allow me to share it with you. (If you don’t want me to share it, this would be a good place to stop reading!)
If I would have died in that ambulance or if I died in the next few minutes on this slab of wood they call a procedure table; the second after I die, that second hand will move again and it will keep going. The minute hands and eventually the hour hand will all continue to move. Now, I also know that the second after I die, I will be with my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in heaven. In the couple of seconds it will take for the folks standing there to realize what has happened, I am gone. But those clocks will continue to tick away the minutes, the hours, days, months, years… until one day when God says, (quoting His Son) “It is Finished” and time will end. I know that will be awhile from now for God’s creation, there is the Tribulation and the Millennial Reign on Earth that must happen first. But, it will happen. The more important point is that it will happen for every one of us, long before the end of the Millennial Reign. It could have happened for me yesterday, before even my daughter or the squad got there. But this time it didn’t. Hopefully, I will get to see me great-grandchildren be born, but I don’t know that and neither do you.
One of these days the watch on your wrist or the clock on your mantel will keep ticking away the minutes and you’ll be gone. I was yesterday, and am today, completely ready for that to happen. I know where I will be in that second. Not because of any good I have done. I deserve hell, no doubt about that. But I am assured of heaven because of God’s Love, Grace and Mercy in the blood of His Son, Jesus.
Clocks… tick, tock, tick, tock… “Lord teach us to number our days aright, that we might gain wisdom.”
Doc Riggs' Ministry Minute 
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