Allow me to import some thinking from leadership in organizational life and apply it to real life. Most people live with either a passive or reactive mindset: passivity resigns leadership to someone else, while reactivity operates with no agenda other than to operate defensively in response to uncontrolled and unforeseen circumstances. To live for maximum impact requires a rejection of passivity and reactivity and, instead, pursuing intentionality.

If you want to live strategically, one of the first decisions you must make is to determine your planning horizon: what is the timespan in which your strategy will determine tactical actions and resource allocations to ensure your desired outcomes? In politics, the planning horizon aligns with election cycles. In business, horizons can be linked to anticipated highs-and-lows of market valuations. In families, generational seasons define the timelines and the efforts that will be engaged.

How does one bring the wisdom of strategic living to bear with our personal approach to life? In retirement planning, the existential exercise centers on what’s often referred to as “the number:” how much must you accumulate – financially – to allow you to retire from income production and enjoy “the fruits of your labor?” Tougher still is the ultimate query: how long do you expect to live?

In the 21^st Century, that question produces intriguing reactions. Elon Musk sees a decline in the value of life – for him – that imagines a finish-line by 90. Tech CEO Bryan Johnson – founder of Blueprint – is spending $2 million/year to make his 45-year-old body 18 again. Dan Sullivan – the creator of the Strategic Coach Program – imagines living to 156 and is exercising what he thinks are the strategies that will make that possible.

Time magazine has an online calculator with a dozen questions to calculate their best assumption for lifespan. Based on their key qualifiers, I have an estimated life expectancy of 91, with the odds of me hitting 96 at 25% (they had no question that included acute myeloid leukemia, for which the National Cancer Institute reports a 29.5% survival rate to five years after initial diagnosis).

Go to the Bible seeking insights. You’ll find a family tree in Genesis 5 with a line of early patriarchs and their lifespans: Adam made 930; Seth 912; Enosh 905; Kenan 910; Mahalaiel 895; Jared 962; Enoch 365; Methuselah 969; Lamech 777. Lamech was the father of Noah, and – then, with the flood – the reset button for mortality was pushed.

Moses lived to be 120, but famously wrote in Psalm 90: “The length of our days is 70 years – or 80, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass and we fly away.” Though he wrote nearly 3500 years ago, he was right-on for Americans, today: the average life expectancy for us is about 79 years; with a gender-gap of about five years, with women outlasting men.

The question is less about “how long,” and – more importantly – about “what’s next?” The human author of the divinely inspired book of Hebrews put it this way: “Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment…” (Hebrews 9:27).

When you hit the finish line, you’ll just be getting started. Eternity awaits us, just over the threshold of death. To put chapters of clarity into the briefest of summaries: our itinerary after this life will be determined by the most important decision we will ever make. Embrace faith in the Good News of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, and “the judgment” will be an awards ceremony for the earth life that followed redemption (see 2 Corinthians 5:1-10). Absent that faith decision, there is a judicial bench before which people of every era will give an account for their less-than-righteous life. It’s called the Great White Throne (see Revelation 20:11-15), and all who appear in that courtroom will be destined for a place the Bible calls “the Lake of Fire,” where the decision to live apart from God in this earth life will be perpetuated forever, in a place of unrelenting despair.

Now 70, my life peer cohort is far more dialed-in on their planning horizon as the certainties of mortality become incontrovertible. I’ve stared-down my finish line… and welcome what comes next.

Who are the people in your life whose preparation for that transition point is faulty, whose life-beyond-this is in question? Does knowing what we have coming in the future affect your drive to share what you know about hope and heaven with friends who are not currently on the guest list for Glory?