On Taking Advantage of What We’ve Been Given

Hey all.
so i was reading my Bible last night, and my eyes fell upon Isaiah 39.
Verses 5-8 read:
Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, "Hear the word of the Lord Almighty: The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your fathers have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, said the Lord. And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood, who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon."
"The word of the Lord you have spoken is good," Hezekiah replied. For he thought, "There will be peace and security in my lifetime." [NIV]

Its easy to read that and think nothing of it.
But read the last line, Hezekiah's quote, again.
"The word of the Lord you have spoken is good... there will be peace and security in my lifetime."
The king of Judah had just been told that everything he owned, and that his fathers had build up and saved, was going to be carried off to Babylon.
Realize that at this point in time, Babylon wasn't a particularly strong power- they were being ruled by the Assyrians.
Imagine if some crazy hippy dude walked up to you and said, "hey mannn... ya know, someday, everything your family owns is going to be carried off to the canadian edge of Maine..."
you probably wouldn't say, "this is good, my dear friend."

See, Hezekiah was glad that there would be "peace and security" while he was still alive.
That's all he was concerned about.

Now flash forward like 3,500 years.
here we are. We are more or less in peace.
sure, we have a war over where Hezekiah was a few millennia ago, but over here, we're at peace. No one's family estates are being trucked over to Maine by hicks with Fords.
Most people wouldn't argue the fact that we have "peace and security".

Now see, Hezekiah was a really good king. He worked hard to make his people stop being retarded got them all to worship God and such... and it shows how grateful he was for Peace and Security... He didn't even think twice when Isaiah told him all his stuff (which he was proud of, i'm sure) was going to be taken. All that mattered was that, until the end of his reign, there would be peace.

A Roman poet known as Horace famously wrote, "Carpe Diem", which translates into English loosely as "Seize the Day".

I think Hezekiah would agree to that sentiment.
He was thankful for what he was given- and look at what we've been given: Americans have more stuff than anyone in history.
So we should try to make the most of it.
We should work with what we've been given and take advantage of the peace and security that we have, to make the most impact that we can.