Sharon and I were walking with some friends in their neighborhood recently when we were enveloped by a luminous orange glow as the sun and the clouds danced in sync to enthrall us with a beautiful sunset. After changing its shape and color, it vanished as it succumbed to the darkness. The entire process took only a few minutes. It reminded me of how fleeting life is, and how if I’m not careful, I will miss out on enjoying experiences that are here today and gone tomorrow.
You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist
that appears for a little time and then vanishes. James 4:14
Time and change take their toll on us. Growing old, ailing health, death, and hardships rob us of our favorite pleasures and relationships one by one. No one I know has experienced this more than my mother, who has seen her husband and all eight of her brothers and sisters leave her behind on this side of heaven. Yet at 93 years of age, she is still a blessing to everyone she meets.
I’m not reminding us of our short time on this earth to depress us, but to wake us up. So we will enjoy and appreciate what we have before it’s too late. We can stay so busy in the rat race of life that we rarely slow down long enough to smell the flowers. We work so hard trying to give our families a good life that we don’t have any time left over to live with them. That’s a real shame, since our children’s early years pass us by so quickly and we cannot go back and do them over again.
We made some great memories with our kids, Brian and Stephanie. We invented a lot of games. Brian and I had one we called “3 on You.” It involved throwing a Koosh ball as hard as we could down the hall to bounce it off each other. We recently reenacted that to demonstrate it to our 5 grandkids. This old man can still let it rip! But these days, we mostly play ping pong. Stephanie and I are history nuts, so we like to visit historic sites. When they were in grade school, I took them out after lunch on their birthdays to grab some ice cream.
I say all this to encourage young parents to resist manicuring a perfect lawn or keeping a squeaky clean house or working longer hours. Why? So they will have enough time left to engage with their kids, who need to be with their parents more than they need things. They will eventually quit asking them to “play with me, Daddy!” Oh, how I would love to sing lullabies to my little ones again as they fall asleep on my chest!
I danced with my daughter at her wedding while James Taylor sang, “I just want to stop, and thank you, Baby. How sweet it is to be loved by you.” There’s a lot of wisdom in that song when you think about it. We need to stop and tell our loved ones how we feel about them.
Tarry awhile longer with your little angels as you watch them sleep. It will help you deal with them when they act like little devils during the day! Reconcile and restore your broken relationships. Don’t let your pride deprive you of good friendships. Don’t wait until you retire before you try things on your bucket list. You may kick the bucket before then!
It’s easy to stay focused on what’s wrong with the world these days or to let a problem you’re dealing with consume you to the point that you can’t enjoy the good things in your life. We need to reverse that trend and not take for granted what God has blessed us with.Don’t wait until your well runs dry. Enjoy your job and your stuff and your pets but most of all enjoy your people because life is fragile and heaven may be a long way off before we see them again.
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12
Dwell in His secret place 