This is the Time
The days pass by so quickly, don’t they? Just like that … there goes another one!
It seems like just yesterday that it was Christmas … and today we stand on the brink of sunshine, dandelions and Popsicle weather!
In my life, it seems as if the seasons have passed more quickly than the speed of light - have yours?
Surely I was just an enthusiastic teen-ager last month … a homesick college freshman perhaps a fortnight ago … a young bride last week … and certainly it was only yesterday morning that I was enjoying a quiver full of children in my home!
Today, my nest is empty, I have been married for 4 glorious decades and my delightful grandchildren are scattered from coast to coast.
The nerve of those children of mine … growing up and leaving me!
However … let me let you in on a little secret … my heart still feels like it is barely 26 … or maybe 28 … or at the very oldest … 32.
The date on my birth certificate somehow doesn’t match the grains of sand that have fallen through the sandglass of my heart.
When I look in the mirror – I still don’t see wrinkles even though they are there. I continue to see potential.
When I get up in the morning … my joints might be a little slower to respond to life than they used to be … but after a few minutes of stretching there remains a spring in my step and purpose in my gait.
When I face another birthday … I don’t dread the coming year but I am just so thankful to be alive!
Time … I must admit that I endure a “love-hate” relationship with you!
There is something about the measuring cup of “time” that seems to empty far too quickly for my liking.
How can my measuring cup of time already be more than half empty?! Where did it all go?
I think that the reason that this entity known as “time” is such a conundrum to human beings is because we weren’t made for time – we were made for eternity.
“Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” – Ecclesiastes 3:11 – NIV
The world that we live in is our temporary home not our permanent destination.
The outer shell that we call our “body” wasn’t made to last forever – it was made to last for several decades but not for forever.
However, our hearts were fashioned for eternity!
The deepest, most precious part of our temporary life was made for eternity! What joy there is in that particular piece of knowledge!
No wonder there is a dis-connect between me and time … between life and time … between the memories that I have made and the commodity known as time!
I was made for eternity and for all the glory that it offers.
I wasn’t made for time but time was made for me by the God of eternity!
God has given me the majestic gift of time as a tasty hors d’oeuvres that only precedes all of eternity.
God, the Father, delivered the asset known as “time” to His creation in order to bequeath us with the priceless opportunity of choosing Him before we get to eternity.
Of serving Him! Of knowing Him! Of loving Him! Of worshiping Him!
Time was meant to prepare me for eternity … and so I must spend every day, as the hourglass quickly sifts through its allotted amount of sand, in pursuit of eternity!
In pursuit of Him!
“But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” – II Peter 3:8
I believe that as I involve myself in eternal pursuits that the Lord will grant me 1,000 years of impact in just a 24-hour period!
I believe that I am not a captive of time but that I have been made in the very image of the God of eternity!
No wonder I don’t “get” time … I was never meant to understand it or embrace it.
Time might say that I have been living over 6 decades … but God says that I ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
God says that I have only just begun to splash in His joy … dive into His hope … and taste His abundance!
There is definitely more of life ahead of me than behind me! So let’s get on with it … let’s get on with the business of tasting eternity this side of heaven.
Thanks for listening to my heart this week. As you know by now, my heart is truly not a perfect heart but it is a heart that is filled to overflowing with gratitude for the life I have been given and for the people who walk with me. And, it continues to be a heart that is relentlessly chasing after God and all that He is!