Tempus Fugit
01 01 15 15:14 Filed in: My Life
Happy new year.
2014 is over. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that’s good news or not. For our part we’ve been thanking God as we remember the blessings and recall God’s work amid the challenges. And we’ve been wondering again where the time has gone.
After I retired I started telling people that I no longer lived by the clock. Such an attitude sometimes frustrates other people who don’t seem to understand when my answer to their “What time is it?” question is Thursday. There is, however, some blessed freedom in not being tied to the minute. I can remember with nostalgia a classroom bell ringing at 11:18 or some other equally odd time, but I have no longing to return to that kind of slavery.
I am, however, ready to embrace the clock again. It is not that I am repenting of my relaxed approach to time; it is rather that I now own a clock (thank you, Suzanne) that reflects my retirement values. I like this clock. I might like it even better if it showed months instead of days, but I can live with it. So today it’s Thursday; happy new year.
2014 is over. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that’s good news or not. For our part we’ve been thanking God as we remember the blessings and recall God’s work amid the challenges. And we’ve been wondering again where the time has gone.
After I retired I started telling people that I no longer lived by the clock. Such an attitude sometimes frustrates other people who don’t seem to understand when my answer to their “What time is it?” question is Thursday. There is, however, some blessed freedom in not being tied to the minute. I can remember with nostalgia a classroom bell ringing at 11:18 or some other equally odd time, but I have no longing to return to that kind of slavery.
Comments
Buried Treasure
28 06 14 17:21 Filed in: My Life
Ah, the memories! It turns out the treasure is not in the buried stuff; it’s in the memories.
Merry ______mas
15 12 13 17:39 Filed in: Reflections
It happened a week ago. We were in Canada to visit Valerie’s mom and to be with her for the annual Christmas party at Bevan Village where she lives. (And yes, they do still call it a Christmas party.) There was a gentleman there whose role was to provide Christmas music during the meal. I’m dad to a musician, so I know that singing and playing to a crowd of people who are making more noise than you are might not be the easiest thing in the world. Perhaps that’s why I tried to listen as I ate. The first song was I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. I looked around, but nobody seemed interested in kissing Santa. Frosty the Snowman was next, and in fairness we did get a bit of snow the next day. After Rudolph his attention turned to bells: Jingle Bells and Silver Bells. I began to wonder if he actually knew any real Christmas carols. The first song that came close to recognizing that Christmas might be about the birth of someone special was Little Drummer Boy, and that was done as an instrumental without any lyrics.
Nobody else seemed to notice in spite of the fact that the same space we occupied is used several days a week by people singing hymns. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not against the popular trappings of Christmas. We’ve cut and decorated a tree, we still send Christmas cards, and we do some Christmas shopping. I even went to the mall on Black Friday. Twice (but that’s another story....) The trappings of Christmas are fun and good -- until they crowd out the one whose birth we celebrate.
It probably shouldn’t surprise me to discover how easily I can accept the secularization of Christmas; I have, after all, lived through plenty of Decembers. But I don’t want to look back on this one with the nagging feeling that something was missing. This year I want for me - and for you - a merry CHRISTmas.
Choosing Blessing
03 11 13 17:00 Filed in: Reflections
I'm blaming Robert Frost for my current train of thought. This is the time of the year when I find myself thinking about choices. It is not that other seasons require fewer or less significant choices, but the vivid changes of fall provide an appropriate backdrop to considering the choices one makes. I have little in common with Robert Frost, but I had to memorize his poem in school too many years ago. You might remember it as well, the one about two roads diverged in a yellow wood.... It's probably Robert Frost's fault.
I'm pretty much happy with the choices I have made, even though some of them were painful. If you have lived long enough, you will have discovered that some choices bring unavoidable pain, perhaps to yourself, perhaps to others. Just about everyone in my generation has made such choices, and some of us are bold enough to admit it. But a painful choice is not necessarily a bad one. (A mundane example: We recently decided to sign up with a nearby fitness center. It is a decision bound to cause some discomfort, but it is a good decision; some pain is worth it.)
I live in an age when the strong temptation is to choose the road of least pain. Well-meaning but occasionally misguided friends encourage that choice. It is a well-worn path, and sometimes it is a good one, but not always. I have come to enough forks in the road to have figured out that the road of least pain is often not the path of greatest blessing. And since I have to choose, blessing is better. Walking through the valley with the One who knows the way has got to beat trying to avoid the valley without him!
So maybe Robert Frost and I do have something in common. When I come to those points where two roads diverge in a yellow wood, I'm likely to make the same choice he did:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Being Heavenly-Minded
Ted achieved that status 25 years ago when my dad passed away in Scotland at the end of a wonderful anniversary trip. My brothers and I were thousands of miles away, but Ted was on site and came alongside my mother, helping to care for the necessary arrangements until I could get there just barely in time for the memorial service. Though we didn't see each other often, I will miss him, and his death has me thinking again about what is and what will be.
Such thinking, I have decided, is healthy in spite of the fact that it may be rare. My train of thought was pushed further along the track this morning when I came across a quote from C. S. Lewis (Mere Christianity) who observed that "the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next." It is an observation that flies in the face of contemporary wisdom. It is a difficult truth that I cannot fully know heaven until I get there; whatever it will be, it will be better than I can imagine. But even with an incomplete and imperfect knowledge, focusing on what will be makes me more effective in handling what is.
I don't much like funerals, but they have an undeniable value for me whether I actually attend them or not. They confront me with the need to think about what will be and not just about what is. Lewis went on to say, "It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in; aim at earth and you will get neither.
He was right. Lord, keep me aimed at heaven.