Skip to main content

Featured

How to have a truly happy new year.

For the first time in years, I don’t remember my New Year’s resolution from January. Usually, I write it down in my journal or on a note I stick to my mirror. There’s been many of those dog-eared sticky notes from years past. The year of contentment. Speaking life. We passed pancakes across the breakfast table on January 1st this year. “What do you want from 2018?” I can’t remember my answer. I know what I didn’t want though. I didn’t want to walk into her office and share the parts of my life I’m inclined to hide. I didn’t want to Facetime her the day after she delivered her baby that never breathed. I didn’t want to spend four months wondering how I’d walk into her house on Christmas day and see her empty chair. I didn’t want to go on another first date that led nowhere. We sit across from each other in a little coffee shop in Colorado, picking at a charcuterie board. “When I think about all of the things I have left to go through,” her voice cracks....
Post a Comment
Read more

Maybe time is not the enemy after all.

I call her a few days after her birthday, making apologies and belated birthday wishes.

And we end up talking about Time, that inevitable brute force, knocking us off our feet and pushing us forward in a surge of unmet expectations toward the wide open unknown.

But she has a way of clarifying things. And she starts to make me wonder if Time is the brute after all.

“I don’t know if you find this,” she says, “but I often set expectations for myself to meet before a certain age.”

How much of our discontentment comes from arbitrary expectations for our lives?

Plan to be married by 30? Single and despairing at 31.

Plan to own a house by 35? Renting in despair at 36.

Plan to know your purpose by 45? Directionless in despair at 46.

But what if we put Time where it belongs? Not in between the numbers on a clock or in the square boxes of a calendar, but into the hands of a timeless God.

Outside of numbers.

And wall clocks.

And boxes.

What if our hearts have not been prepared for our spouse by 31? What if our mobility is needed for full time missions by 36? What if God has promised that He will continue His work in us even when we are 46?

Perhaps Time is not pressing us.

But we are pressing ourselves.

Until we get out of the way and let Time do its job.

And let God do His.

“But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hand.” Psalm 31:14-15




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts