Once upon a time, I had a very vivid daydream (but it was at night) that brought me to tears.
The thought dropped into my mind: that I most likely have very many Christian ancestors, and how I'd like to meet them. How in heaven, I'd walk into a room full of family I'd never known, but who'd perhaps prayed for me and wondered about me. How it'd be joyous and full of breathless hugging and singing and dancing, full of pinched cheeks and stares and wonder, a whirling circle of fellowship and felicity. I cannot describe it for you well. "G-G-G-Great Aunt Fanny" from Ireland would be rubbing her eyes and chuckling and crumpling her apron hem. "_____ Grandfather Jim" from England would poke me with his cane and ask me about helicopters. His wife "Emily" would give me a good long, rib-cracking hug and tell me she was "happy as a lamb" to see me here. _____ Uncle Arthur would ask me about the horses of my age. They'd all be greatly mystified by the tales of my childhood, by Veggie Tales and rip-sticks and so forth. And we'd all be joined together by the Joy of Jesus more than by any strain of DNA.
And we'd sit around a great fire, roasting some s'mores and telling stories of war and the world and our journeys into the arms of the Father until the wee hours (if they have wee hours in heaven).
It'd be almost like the garden scene in Narnia, in the Last Battle, when Reepicheep opens the grand gates (of the green hill garden in the blue mountains) to people of old and people they'd loved, to a laughing, weaving fellowship of heroes and legends and friends and family, to jubilation and glory, to old jokes and increasing beauty, to joy heretofore unknown but wondered at.
But I am pulled back to the present, to my own swiftly rushing stream of time. Have you ever thought — that of all the billions of souls that drifted and are now drifting in the time and place of this world, God orchestrated that your path to intersect with a certain small margin of them? What a blessing, what an opportunity, we have, to enrich one another's lives before we are gone and sunk from the sands of time, before our one hourglass is up. Out of countless stars of souls, we are friends with a few, family of a few, and spouse to one, perhaps.
Freaking treasure those people! It's no accident that those immortal souls are in your life, that you drift with them down the river instead of others in the millions. Seek their good, seek to show them the love of Christ. Those who don't know the Clock-Maker are headed for a waterfall. Do not waste your one precious, wild life, your redeemed life. Who is in your time that does not know the Savior? Will you use your time to tell them? Will we pour out our bucket of days for those lost and weary or drift along like we're in the lazy river...
Some times are difficult, some are wonderful. There is a season for everything, as Ecclesiastes repeats.
Just be intentional about who you are spending your time for, and what on.
So many of us race to retirement and to material wealth just to waste our last years mindlessly watching tv.
The clock seems to move so slowly some days. But days fly by.
And one day, there will come an end to time, and we will be left wondering what we did with our one bucketful of days, that hidden bucketful. Our days are numbered, a number we don't know. Live like you're dying. Not in a helter-skelter, frantic, bucket-list fashion.
Live like you've got one life to GIVE, because you do, and all your days, belong to Christ.
Time gallops along full speed as ever, but we leap onto its back and grin into the wind, for this steed gallops us to the end of time. We will treasure it, but shall not mourn its passing too greatly. The horse Time gallops toward the redemption of all things. Time gallops to eternity with Christ. Are you living like it?
"When the day of recompense comes, our only regret will be that we have done so little for Him, not that we have done too much." — George Muller
