Is it ever too late?

This morning as I was driving into work, I listened to a story about a girl whose goal was to raise $300 by her 9th birthday to donate to countries without access to clean drinking water. What a noble cause! Sadly, she was $80 away from her goal when she was killed in a car accident.

The silver lining to this story was that in the aftermath of this tragedy, almost $200,000 was raised towards her cause. This made me pause to think for a moment: why is it that so often it takes something drastic to happen to motivate us to do something?

A few weeks ago I was listening to a sermon at church on procrastination. I had been thinking about making a phone call that was much overdue, but had been putting it off for various reasons - not the least of which because it had been so long since we had spoken. To make a long story short, I put off making the call, and a few weeks later I regretted not doing so earlier. "If I only had called earlier," I thought, "maybe it wouldn't be too late."

Therein lies the question of the day: "Is it ever too late?" Perhaps we often think of the "too late" question from the wrong perspective. If you are anything like me, you think about this question in terms of it being too late for things to turn out the way YOU want them to turn out. Instead, perhaps we can think about whether it's too late for things to turn out in the way God wants them to happen - a way that goes beyond our human comprehension.

A little 9-year old girl had a desire to raise a mere $300 to help people she didn't know get clean drinking water. A big part of me feels that it shouldn't take tragedy to motivate people to do good. Wouldn't it be great if this girl got the satisfaction of knowing her worthwhile goal was accomplished? Although it might feel like it's too late for her to know that her kindness was noticed and supported, somehow I feel like she knows. $200,000 later, it is not too late.