running into time

view from the cottage, Goderich 2014

Remember when summer seemed to stretch long and endlessly and when summer vacation wound down you were *almost* ready to return to school? Or when one year felt like a thousand?

And suddenly, you are an adult with responsibilities and priorities and projects and time won't slow down long enough to let you catch you breath.

boardwalk on Assateague Island

I've been thinking about time lately. It's the constant reminder of death pressing in that does it, the cancer diagnoses and deaths of friends and family and acquaintances that roll in, one after another, washing time away.

in the River, summer 2014

I ache for eternity.

The time out of time when rush is a distant memory and the tyrant urgent is squashed under the feet of our Eternal King and we, all His saints, all the believers in Christ that we loved and lost on this earth, can linger at His feet without concern for dirty dishes and bills that need paying looming in the backs of our minds.

seagulls on Assateague Island, VA

But until then...

Until then, I pray for the ability to be fully present in the moments I am given. I pray for the grace to listen without distraction to very. detailed. monologues. about Star Wars characters and ships or Wii game action or both combined. I pray for the slowing down required for compassion and mercy to bloom when I'd rather rush to the resolution.

I pray for these things because I want to run into time. To know I have poured myself out for every moment the Lord has given me. To not fritter it away on impatience, annoyance and resentment at having "my" time interrupted. Because it is not my time after all. It's His.

Goderich 2012