This is my father’s sister Margarita. She died of a sulfa overdose when she was in her late teens.
When as an adult I reconnected with my father, I enjoyed looking at the wall of family photos in the family room of his home. However, I was fascinated with this photo of my Aunt Margarita. I would sit and ponder for hours on what might have been if she had lived.
It has been estimated that 108 billion people have been born since man started walking the earth. Currently there are 7.4 billion people in the world — so just under 10% of all births since the beginning of man are alive today. Some would have us believe that the 90% who have passed are lost in the sands of time forever. They would have us believe that the 5, 10, 25, 50 or 75 years that they have lived on this earth is the end of their existence. Well, poppycock I say — and a simple test can prove it.
If you can stand it, go three to six months without checking yourself out in a mirror. Then one day, stand in front of the biggest mirror you have in your house and check out the image that you see really well. The reality is that while our body is constantly changing, as in maturing and growing old — the spirit (some call it consciousness) that is inside of us consistently has a problem with what it sees in the mirror, correct? If we were honest with ourselves, we know that our spirits have not even changed one day — while the body progressively ages. Why? Because compared with eternity — 25, 50, 75 or even 100 years is like a drop in the bucket. Our spirits were designed for eternity.
So if it is true that we have an eternal spirit, then studying and developing our eternal road map has to be very important. As humans we are practical beings — most of the time. We wouldn’t dream of going on a two week vacation without at least a minimal amount of planning involved ahead of time. Developing our eternal road map is a totally worthwhile exercise — and might even change some of the way that we live our lives on earth.
I would be the first to admit that for the majority of us, our spiritual direction was predetermined by our families. I have friends that grew up in Buddhist households and are Buddhist to this day. I have friends that grew up in Hindu households and are Hindu to this day. This tendency is true for probably a good 90% of all humans I would imagine.
As both sides of my family are Christian, is it any great surprise that I am a Christian? And what I can tell you of my family is that they are not Christians because they are ‘robots’ that just meekly follow the spiritual direction of their ancestors. They studied the world’s religions and still decided to remain Christians. As again I believe that we are spiritual beings designed for eternity, I would highly encourage all of us to study the world’s religions so that we can be prepare our eternal road map.
Now, I will speak as a Christian. When bad things happen to good people, God often gets a bad rap. My Aunt Margarita died before she even had a chance to really ‘live’. My cousin Luis died in a vehicle accident when he was 21 years old. These were both good people who died well before their time. We all have examples like this in our lives. And maybe to our shame, we have been angry with God for letting bad things happen to good people — like it was really God’s fault.
As God has a sense of humor, I am sure that He smiles and maybe even chuckles when He hears some of these grumblings. Why? Because as He created Earth, He also created Heaven — and even the most breathtakingly beautiful areas of our wonderful Earth cannot even begin to compare with the beauty that is Heaven! So in His mind, He just gave some blessed folk an early ticket to paradise!
I have often said that even if we had a totally crappy and ‘bad luckish’ life on earth (a high percentage of the world does unfortunately), this short span of time is a drop in the bucket compared with eternity. So even if a poor person in Ethiopia dies in his poverty at the age of 18 (18 million people die of poverty-related causes annually) — as long as he believed in Jesus Christ, then he has a one way ticket to Heaven! There, he will spend eternity in the most beautiful of worlds — where gold is so common it is used to pave the streets!
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16,17 NIV)
Aunt Margarita, I cannot wait to go to Heaven and meet you in person! I am sure that we will have a lot to talk about!
Anthony Cota
Anthony Cota 
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