About | The Booklet
Hi, my name is Steve Dawson, and I am passionate about reminding folks about how short and brief, life is! So, I was led to write the little booklet entitled The Brevity of Life, and to create the website, brevityoflife.org. The Christian message is inviting, exciting, but urgent, because life is soooo short!! You see, everyone is invited to Heaven, but a response from you is needed and expected. Please read on, and consider your personal response. R.S.V.P. your personal response today!
“Destiny is no matter of chance; It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; It is a thing to be achieved.”
– William Jennings Bryan
Hello!
Download your personal copy of the booklet that I wrote. Then download a few more copies to share with family/friends. When I was encouraged to write this booklet, I realized that most people do not want to initiate a conversation, or even want to think about death while they are alive and feeling perfectly fine. They might think you are a little weird or morbid to bring up the subject. But, see that’s the thing. That’s the challenge. I wrote the Brevity of Life booklet especially for regular busy folks, like you and I, to make them stop and think about how very short life is before it is too late! This booklet, which has now been in circulation for 20 years, has been especially used in hospice work, at funerals, and at memorial services. That is well and good, because peoples’ minds are at that time, of course, attuned to think about dying and death. Although it has been effectively received in those situations, by the living, it is a little late, don’t you think, for the one who has just died without, perhaps, having the opportunity to ponder their very own personal spiritual choice considerations? So, now let this booklet be your personal invitation to consciously decide on Eternal matters! Read it. Think about it. And, ask yourself, “If not now, when?” May God bless you!
-Stephen Dawson
In this world, nothing is certain, except death and taxes, wrote Ben Franklin in 1789. During the next 100 years, Mark Twain popularized those words through his own writing. It’s remarkable how times do and don’t change, isn’t it? Death and taxes are still certain at the turn of the 21st century, but ironically, while today’s society has come to grips with taxes (albeit grudgingly at times), this same society has shown a complete unwillingness to come face to face with death. Many people flat out deny or refuse to discuss it, looking for cryonics or some other future technology to eliminate death. Others simply shy away out of fear, hoping if they don’t think about it, then maybe somehow it will just “go away.” Across the board, the dilemma remains: people today seem unable to address it, deal with it, or respond to it in any meaningful way.
Yet, each of us inevitably faces death. Have you ever stopped to consider that in 100 years from now, you and I and everyone else now living in this world will be dead? In a manner of speaking, planet earth is one big graveyard! So, there you have it. Death is certain and sometimes, unexplainably swift. So, what now? If we as a people struggle to address death, then where do we turn?
The Bible speaks about the certainty of death from cover to cover. It also speaks about our longevity.“The length of our days is seventy years – or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow for they quickly pass, and we fly away” (Psalm 90:10). The Bible encourages us to “number our days.” In Psalm 90:12 it says, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” If we accept the fact that on average, we might live to be 70 years old, then we can know how to “number our days.”