Time

Do you ever feel like time is racing by faster and faster? Do you look back on your life and wonder what happened to all the years? Job said, "My days are swifter than a runner; they fly away without a glimpse of joy." (Job 9:25) As I grow older, I am beginning to understand how he might have felt. Sometimes, my days do seem to race by like a runner, leaving nothing more than a blur of what once was. Lately, I've been thinking of the past quite a bit and what it all means to me today. It's funny how the past almost seems to have a physical existence, like it exists "somewhere", "out there". God created us to be thinkers and stretch the power of our minds, and I guess that's how the whole concept of time travel began. Man has always tried to harness time, but much like the mind, our efforts prove futile. Is time only a relative concept and our memories just bits and pieces of data, stored away in the recesses the miracle that is our brain?

Go back in time, for just a moment, to your very earliest memory. Mine is the day my parents brought my younger brother home from the hospital. I was only three years old and I remember this little red thing wrapped in white and the house filled with people. I remember my Mom smiling at me as she encouraged me to “meet” him for the first time. Your memory will be very different. It might be your first haircut, getting your first bike, a particular Christmas that stands out, your first time at the beach, whatever. Close your eyes, fix your thoughts on that moment and think about it for just a few minutes. Do your best to imagine the details. Try and remember how it felt. What did things look like around you? What time of day was it? What was the lighting like? What smells do you think might have been connected to this memory. Who was there? What were they wearing? Put yourself in that moment. Capture it. Be in that moment.

Now, concentrate on the moment you are in right now. You might be at work, at home, in a Starbucks like I am, wherever you are. You might be taking a walk, working out at the gym, shopping, whatever. Look at the environment around you. Focus on the details of your surroundings. Engage all of your senses. Who is with you or around you? Close your eyes and take in the and sounds. Focus on the smells. Absorb this very moment. Take it in. Capture it. Be in this moment.

Now imagine the great expanse of life in between these two moments. Imagine the vast and detailed canvas of your life. Two very specific memories. Two isolated points of time. Two very distinct and vivid moments, divided by an almost endless amount of details, moments and memories that make up the construct of your life. Now think about this for a moment. What holds these two memories to one another? What connects these moments together? What is the “filling” of these two very different and isolated points of time? What are some of the events in life that you would look at as significant; the ones that have transformed you into who you are today? Who are the people that have come in and out of your life? How long were they in your life? How have the touched you? How have they changed you?

Now go back to that first memory. How did that one significant event affect the filling of your life? How did that event play a part, even if very small, in the progression of where you are today? How did that event help in directing the life you lived after that moment? Why do you think God put you in that very place in time, to experience what you did in that moment? Why has He put you in this place in time, reading this particular blog?

What’s my point? I’m not sure. I guess as I get older, I am beginning to look at my life with a more critical eye. As I do certain things, right or wrong, I am more aware of how they might affect the rest of my life. I wonder how each action I take might have an influence on other events that follow. I wonder how what I do, say and even think, might touch someone else’s life and even change the course of events. Obviously, the birth of my brother was a very significant event in my life because as hard as I try, I do not remember anything before he was born. How different would my life be had he not come along? How different would my life be if he had been a girl, or if he had been mentally or physically disabled?

Think about it. A lot of time has transpired between the two moments that we just imagined. And as we live in the present day, our tendency is to move extremely fast. Let’s face it; as we get older, time seems to accelerate at an alarming rate. I remember when a year seemed to be an eternity. Now, a year goes by in the flash of an instant. And that makes me wonder, “What happened to all that time? Where did it go? What happened to all those details and moments of my life? And I guess what I’m really asking is, “How have I lived throughout this last year? What did I do with these memories and moments? How have they affected my “today” and how will they affect my tomorrow?

“What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” (James 4:14) If these things are true, does this not have a profound effect on how we live our lives each day? Each hour? Each minute? Each second? I think this might be the “meaningless” of life that God is trying to get across to us. Maybe in terms of eternity, our lives on earth are only a snapshot of what God created us to be.

Faith

I spend a lot of time meditating on life and the world we live in. And when I think about it, I've been like this ever since I was a little boy. I remember sitting in my room, staring at the ceiling and asking questions like, "Why am I here?" "Why am I who I am?" "Why does this world exist?" "Why is there death?" As I developed a deeper concept of God, these questions began to make more sense, but I have to admit; even today, I ponder these issues probably more than most people. And probably more than I should. After all, the book of Ecclesiastes opens with the words, "Meaningless! Meaningless!...Everything is meaningless." Maybe he was on to something?

I guess you can say that I got a glimpse of the "meaninglessness" of life a few weeks ago. Let me share with you what happened on an ordinary day after getting my haircut. As I turned my car onto FM 518, I saw the familiar and peppy gallop of two dogs that I met and rescued just after Christmas. Trevor and Faith were trotting down the busy League City street in the familiar and aimless manner of dogs who are not at all street savoy. Afternoon congestion only caused confusion, as they blindly dodged in and out of traffic; for a moment darting off the side walk and then back on again. I instantly knew that I was going to have to intervene to keep these two out of imminent danger yet again.

I began to pull over, but before I could initiate a plan of attack, the two suddenly split up. Trevor, a terrior mix, sprinted down the sidewalk that parallels FM 518, and Faith, a black lab, dodged into an apartment complex, apparently limping as she listlessly hopped a parking lot curb. Assuming that she would be safe for the moment, I chose to try and round up Trevor as he raced East toward my neighborhood. Speeding ahead of traffic, I screeched into the next intersection, cut him off at the pass, and waited for him to get a bit closer. "Come on Trevor! Come on boy!", I yelled out, assuming he would recognize me. But much to my surprise, he quickly darted to the left, and fell into a full speed sprint through an open field.

Realizing that there was no chance of catching him, I quickly made an illegal u-turn, and backtracked to find Faith. Back at the apartment complex, I made my way through the back parking lot until I saw two people standing behind a few parked cars looking down at the grass. I asked if they had seen a black lab, and my heart sunk as a woman replied with tears in her eyes, "Yeah, she's right here! And she's messed up bad!"

Jumping out of my car, I raced over to where the people were standing. And there on the ground, laying in a grassy spot was Faith; gasping for breath and bleeding from the mouth. "Is she yours?", the woman asked. "No, but I know her and know where she lives. I saved her a few months ago and was trying to do it again.". I put my hand on Faith's head and whispered that it was going to be OK. You know, the way "dog people", like myself, find themselves talking to dogs? The other person was a man pouring cold water over her head and mumbled that she must be bleeding internally. We agreed and after a few minutes, we glanced at each other, shook our heads, and without a word, agreed that she was not going to make it. Unfortunately, our unspoken assumption was right.

As I rubbed Faith's head with my right hand, she laid her head on top of my left, gave one last raspy gasp, spit out some blood, closed her eyes and died. Just like that. We sat there, starring at Faith for a few seconds and it was very quiet. I wasn't unusually sad, but I suddenly felt very out of control. Not panic, anger or fear, but just a simple realization that I really don't have a lot of control in life. This elaborate system that God has created is complex and in reality, we are just a part of it. We don't control the system, we only live in submission to it or aimlessly attempt to manipulate it.

The author of Ecclesiastes goes on to say that "No man has power over the wind to contain it; so no one has power over the day of his death." Yes, you may be thinking that Faith was just a dog. And I guess an animal's life is not on the same level as that of a humans, but life is life. God grants it and He takes it away. He starts all the internal clocks of life and stops them when time runs out. We have no real control, and I think a large part of our healthy functioning in this system God has created, is just accepting that.

Job understood this simple concept. And when he found himself in in the midst of the deepest grief and despair in the death of his sons and daughters, he lifted up his hands toward God and cried out from the depth of his soul, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." Job knew that life is in the control of the hands of God, just as the wind that blows and cannot be contained with feeble human hands.

Sure, I could look at this experience and say to myself, "Hey, Faith was just another dog that got hit by a car. It happens everyday". But I chose to dig into the moment and focus on what was really happening. God's system of creation is constantly moving around us and for the most part, it functions better than anything human hands have developed. Life is an amazing thing and seeing life end from time to time helps us to realize how incredible each breath of it really is.