“What is your life? It is a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes,” said James. We obsess about time. It springs forward. It falls back. It never stops ticking. Death is perpetually closer. We race and hurry. We are early and late but rarely on time. Never enough until we feel like skipping a difficult chapter. When a great moment passes, we want it back. We long for the good old days as if the future has no chance to compete. Life moves too fast or too slowly. We make great sacrifices to reach the mountaintop only to slide down the other side. Worse yet, we hang our heads as a new mountain range emerges with not enough time for another summit.
How do we embrace time as a gift?
C.S. Lewis offered some insight into how God sees it. “To Him, all the physical events and all the human acts are present in an eternal now.“ I was recently reflecting on my son Quinn’s death nearly a decade ago. As you age, the future shrinks but so does the past. Years feel like a breath away in either direction. But this moment, the eternal now is real and stretches on forever. We all have precious moments that seem to exist outside of time, and there are more to come. If I am an eternal creature, time is not a constraint. And if I eventually have all the time in the world, don’t I have it now already?
If you only had one day left to live, how would you spend it?
Most of us have pondered that question at least a handful of times. I think a more important one is if you had an infinite number of days left, how would you spend today? Why shouldn’t it be the same answer? I used to be more anxious about achievement and success. My perspective has shifted in that I now see them more as byproducts than goals. The things worth pursuing are worth pursuing perpetually. They shouldn’t have an end date. What is worth doing on the last day of your life is worth doing now. Let that thought marinate.
What would you say to your family with your last breath?
Say it to them now. Who do you want to bless on your last day? Bless them now. Have you accumulated enough to give more now? Then do it. I want to play pickleball during my last days. I will play now. I want to be the crazy 90-year-old running marathons. So, I run them now. If I want an intimate marriage at 80, I better start loving my wife now. I shared with someone recently, “Doing the dishes covers a multitude of sins!” What do you want people to say about you at your funeral? Start doing those things today.
The young have too little time. The old have too much. These are lies.
We all have the same amount. There is no discrimination. We all have enough. I love Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God.” There is a book entitled “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.” There is plenty of time for rest. Work hard and play hard. I recently watched a video of a coach inspiring his team to sprint through the finish line, not to it. This is how we should approach life. You aren’t too young or poor to rest. And you aren’t too old and wealthy to reminisce about your best days being behind you. I like to say to others, “Keep your prime ahead of you!” The reason my dad always says, “It just doesn’t get any better than this,” is because he has unlocked the secret of the joy present in this moment, the eternal now. Tick tock.
March 2025
