time

Hourglass: measures the passage of a few minutes or an hour of time.

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Time is a concept that baffles me.

Take a lifetime for instance.  Each day you wake up, you are a day closer to meeting the grave. Making it even more specific (and possibly morbid and depressing?), each second brings you closer to that occasion. Yet, simultaneously, those same seconds of approaching end are moments that you've never seen before in all of your life.  Brand new.

Ah the tension.  It's everywhere.  Living life to the fullest because of the newness of each second, but living it with the overarching sense of purpose because all those seconds of a life, combined, only equal a blink.  Making every moment count, but realizing that sometimes means just soaking it all up,  reminding yourself why life is worth receiving your full attention.  Why it's worth excellence and the best you can offer.

The hourglass picture spurs on this conversation that I'm having with myself about time.  As the sand goes through the little hole, each movement is an arrival at a destination it's never known, yet it will still reach its end, settling into the bottom part of the instrument.  Mind-boggling.  (Maybe not...I don't know.  Everything blows my mind these days.  Like the interview I overheard today on NPR with a physicist who talked about this new "cutting edge" string theory that believes the earth is actually just a really big membrane...and that apparently there may be an equation to calculate where everything in the universe exists...crazy...and yes, I laughed.)

I believe that wisdom is the lady who knows how to teach us how to live in this tension. We dream big dreams because there is so much possibility, but we also learn how to set a pace that doesn't result in burn out and disillusionment.  We believe for big things and take risks that get our adrenaline pumping, yet still know how to calm down for a nice picnic lunch.  Using the time we're given to the fullest.  Every moment a chance to thank God for newness--for the fact that dead skin cells shed and new ones grow and that we also get emotional and spiritual processes that shed our yucky stuff so that we can grow into the dream of God's heart.  But maybe His dream is really not a destination--maybe it's not all the big things that people think we need to do to be successful in the Kingdom.  Maybe it's not an arrival at some "identity" that we're working towards, even though we never know how to adequately measure it in terms of progress.

 As humans, we so often set down exact measurements for arrival..."Oh, I have to be there in 10 minutes" or "I need to meet them on this date" or countless other varieties of the same sentiment.  But what if a huge part of even making it to that meeting on time has to do with how you got there--with the in between time.  What if that's where the dream is largely taking place.  What if it's the journey, the friendship, that God's heart is dreaming of and longing for, instead of the achievement of some perfect and whole identity, or some great achievement?  I don't doubt that God's desire is to bring us into wholeness, and that He longs to use us to do big things, like change whole nations, but what if a large part of coming into that wholeness and walking in power is seeing the in between parts and learning how to thank God for each moment of life we've been given, even when we don't always know how to use those moments well.

  Wisdom is a faithful teacher.  I want to know how to number my days.  Not in a morbid way.  But in a way that embraces the newness while knowing life's a vapor.  To live within the context of eternity, but realize each moment I breathe is time I've been given to store up treasures that will either be corruptible or incorruptible.  My choice.

Enough thoughts tonight.  My head hurts from too much new information over the past few weeks.  I need a vacation at a cottage in the middle of Irish hills.