An Extra Day

An Extra Day

By Paul McCann

A few years ago I was talking to one of the priests in Holy Cross about some of his memories of Holy Cross and he told me this story about John .

Every day on his way home from work John called in to the church .

It was usually around dinner time .

The priest overheard John one day talking to Jesus as he sat in a seat in front if the altar .

“Jesus hello it’s John , sorry I haven’t time to pray “

Then off he went on his way from the church .

Every day at the same time John would do the same thing . He sat in the same seat and said the same thing .

“Hello Jesus it’s John .Sorry Im so busy and haven’t time to pray “

Then he’d leave the church .

One evening after John come in after work there were a few other people in the church and John sat in his usual seat .

There was devotions on that evening and a few more people came into the church .

John suddenly grabbed his chest and fell to the ground People went over to see what was wrong .

One of the women in the church overheard the priest who leaned over and whispered in the dead man’s ear ,

“Hello John , this is Jesus . It’s ok “

One of the parishioner’s in church had already called an ambulance .

When the ambulance arrived John had recovered and was sitting up in the seat .

The paramedics did a check on his vitals and could not explain why the man had went unconscious . Some of the people had said it looked like he had died but they had not actually done any clinical observations on him . John spoke to the paramedics and asked them want they were doing in the church and if someone had an accident . There was a doctor in the church who noticed the goings on and went over to assess the situation and asked one of the paramedics

“Can you give me a brief history of what happened ?”

The first paramedic replied .

“I had communication about a man who seemed to have had a heart attack . When we arrived no less than fifteen minutes ago . We thought we were transporting him to the morgue but as you can see he’s alive and well “

The doctor performed a few tests on John and was satisfied he was ok , then

gave a written report to the paramedics for their supervisor . “

The doctor stood beside the trolley in the church and said .

There no casualty here , you best be on your way.“

The second paramedic said ,

“ Right then ,?we’ll head off back to ICU.”

John made his way from his seat and left the church .

The following day John returned after work and as usual called into the church ans spoke as he always did to Jesus and later on that day he passed away .

That made me think what if God have given John an extra day to get a few things sorted out .’What if on the previous day it wasn’t his time to leave this world yet . Imagine if God was to give us an extra to do some last minute things ?

If you still had one more day left , what would you do ?

i spoke to a friend about this who had recently been diagnosed with terminal illness and he said

“ After the Doctor told me I had only months to live for the first timing my life,

I listened to birds singing . Their sweet songs were so beautiful to hear .and I noticed the trees . Their leaves looked so soft and green and all the flowers smelt so fragrant .

Who knows but if we were given an extra day we too might have a chance to see things

differently and address a few issues that we should have done before now .

The End