Have you ever taught a child to tell time? We are just beginning this with Claire, and it is a crazy process! 60 seconds make a minute, 60 minutes make an hour, 24 hours make a day. You and I both know this, but apparently 4 year olds do not experience time the same way I do. The period of time when the shirt is over the head until I can pull it down apparently lasts for hours. The ‘10 more minutes’ before bed time apparently passes in just an eye blink.
As adults, we have a bit better sense of the flow of time, but we’ve all experienced moments in our life when time did not progress in the accustomed way: Those moments when the world stands still, and seconds fall like hours. Unfortunately these are often moments of overwhelming grief, where our pain washed over us, burning every minute detail into our memories forever, stretching fleeting seconds into agonizing hours. Logically, I know that it only took my grandmother about four minutes to silently slip away after the doctors disconnected her from the ventilator. Emotionally, those four minutes have written hours worth of memories onto my heart.
We’ve also all experienced those moments when time seems to accelerate with no warning, dancing away from us no matter how hard we grasp. Time can fly away from us, running through our fingers like the rays of a setting sun. When I watch my girls revel in a new found joy, I cling to the moment, willing it to last forever in my heart of hearts. But somehow, in those perfect, pristine moments of joy, minutes float away like seconds, always leaving us hungry and yearning for more.
My prayer today, is that God would me have and use and be in this day to my fullest. I want to give this day to God. May my time be God's time.
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