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Sunday, Jan 03 by Larry Slings in Christianity and Culture | (0) Comments
I’ve been thinking about the passing of time lately. I know many people think about the passing of time as Christmas comes and goes and we move on to the New Year. And when the year is 2010-a number like that causes me to pause and reflect even more. For me, thinking about the passing of time happens more often with birthdays –my own, but also other people’s. Recently as we were watching our youngest grandchild on Skype, my daughter reminded us that he is already 6 months old. It’s amazing to see the changes in him in the 6 months since his birth. But, where the passing of time produces physical growth and maturing in the young, it produces something else as we get older.
I thought of how the passing of time all to often reveals change and decay, as we grow older. It reminds me of the words in the old song: “change and decay in all around I see”. My father-in-law and I had birthdays one day apart. I watched over a period of 30 some years as the aging process slowed him down. Finally, his rapidly deteriorating health and subsequent death a few years ago left me reflecting on the passing of the years in my own life.
Back when I first became a pastor, people often told me I looked too young to be a pastor. Isn’t that funny? –No one has said that to me in a long time. In fact, recently when someone heard that I was doing interim work, he said, “ I didn’t know you were retired!” I’m not—but do I look like I should be? Ouch! Then I looked at a recent picture of myself, and – oh my!
From all of that thinking about the passing of years, I have concluded it is a waste of time and energy to fret about those passing years. It’s good to remember again that life is a gift – no matter how old we are. The important thing is to enjoy that gift of life each day. I want to take each day as a new opportunity to focus on service to God and others in the present. I want to use the time given me to become more Christ-like, more useful, more fulfilling of the purpose for which God made me.
More enjoying, less fretting. More thankfulness for who we are, less longing for what we can never be again (or never were –except in our overly romanticized memory.) Using time wisely now, that is what is called for now. Shall we do that as we observe one year passing to another?
In the name of the one who never ages, -Pastor Larry Slings