On Time

"...You have created all things and for Your pleasure"-- that is, to bring a smile to Your face and fullness to Your purpose -- "for Your pleasure they are and were created."
(Revelation 4:11)

Yesterday. Where did it go? Yesterday was a good day. There was purpose in yesterday, a sense of accomplishment. Yesterday there was a conversation, low and slow, with that special one who brings into the room a quiet joy, a sense of discovery. Yesterday there was a good book to read. There was music. And yesterday there was rest in the way life is stepping out just now. Yesterday was a good day. Where did it go? The taste remains and the fragrance, but the minutes are gone and the hours. The whole of today, it will go also, too quickly in my thinking, like a vapor, here and then every bit not here.

Time.

This very time...this right-now time...I open my hand and I have it! I really have it, this remarkable moment, and then I close my hand, to touch, to hold, to cherish, to keep, and suddenly it's gone as if it had never been at all. Only the taste, only the fragrance, only the mark on my heart remains.

Time.

Time cannot be corraled...penned up...shut in...held fast. Of all the things in this space that sits in eternity, of all the things, these perhaps are most elusive: hours and minutes that become days and months that become seasons and years. They are mine, wholly mine, and yet never really mine at all.

Time.

Created as are all things for You, O God...Lord...time cannot be held on to or expanded or lengthened or diminished or altered or manipulated. People can be manipulated. Circumstances can be manipulated. Resources can be manipulated. We can tame tigers and turn dogs wild. We can change the clocks to "save" daylight hours anad we can turn on lights in the night. But time? Of all created things time is perhaps the only thing that cannot be manipulated. I can watch it pass, squandered and unappreciated. I can watch it pass and grieve the passing because I have valued what has been. I can watch it pass and cry out against its pace, too fast or too slow, but I can neither detain it nor hurry it on its way.

Time.

It is what it is. It can be all that it is as I choose to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the God Who created it and Whose pleasure it is to mark it 'redeemed' and fill it up with remarkable moments that rhyme with His heart.