Time, as it turns out, is not on my side. No, it isn't. It does make my life possible, but it also takes my life away. What it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. Our lives are lived inside of time and yet our hearts desire to live outside of it. We are born into a sea of seconds and yet our hearts aspire to a land of limitlessness. There is never enough of the thing we need to stay alive. There is never enough of it for those we love. There is no way to save it or take it with you. Sixty seconds a minute, sixty minutes an hour, tick by in perfect time and won't pause for anyone: rich, poor, man, woman, adult, child, black, white, yellow, red, sick, healthy, innocent, guilty, true, false, important or insignificant -- it is a respecter of none. It is the ultimate egalitarian. It will be the end of everyone it began. Every lifetime is merely a dash between two dates and while giving some longer dashes than others, it never fails to bookend a story with a final date. It is observed on the tombs of those who have gone before us and the living should take note of the dead knowing this will be their end as well.
Ecclesiastes 7:2
It is better to go to the house of mourning,
than to go to the house of feasting:
for that is the end of all men;
and the living will lay it to his heart.
The dashes on our tombstones will be short straight lines, but the days they represent will certainly have had their ups and downs. Everything is going somewhere and sooner or later it’s going to get there. The ups and downs are included in the short straight line between when we got here and where we’re going. May our ups and downs all add up to great God stories for our short dashes.
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