When I was a wee fellow, my Mom watched soap operas. She wasn’t religious or ardent about it. She was much too busy for all that, but she did it enough for me to remember how the intro to her favorite
“Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”
I’ve referenced this once or twice before, so you know it had some sort of impact on me, or I am entertained by the memory of it.
I grew up, then, with this image in my head. I saw each day like sand, slowly but steadily sifting through the neck in the hourglass.
What the jerks at NBC failed to tell me was this: as you age, the hourglass loses its figure. While your midriff expands so does its. The sand that once moved excruciatingly slow moves a little faster with each passing year.
As a boy, there seemed an eternity between Christmases. The time from last Christmas to next may as well have been forever. Now, last Christmas and next are just a day or two apart and it is impossible to know where the time went. (2020 may be the exception to this rule, but you know what I mean – if you are of a certain age.)
They say, Time marches on. It does, for awhile. Then it jogs. Then it sprints.
This year has reminded me of the relentless sifting of the sands of time. Twenty-four years ago, I was the pastor of the Victory Baptist Church in Paris, Texas. I was surrounded then by wonderful friends and supporters. None were greater friends or more loyal supporters than Richard and Edna Terrell and Martin and Annis Blake. Each couple defined for me what it means to be Christian.
A few weeks ago, Richard died after a long bout with cancer. A few days ago, Annis passed, a victim of COVID19. Two great friends are gone to glory and two more are left to sift through the sands of time without their life partners.
If only I could get the invincible youth to understand and appreciate that time is fleeting, your days are few, and opportunity to live, love, laugh, and experience the wonder of it all will not last forever.
A few things I know are true:
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Time waits for no one
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What feels like a long time isn’t
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There is no time to waste
On September 28, 2020, I began my sixtieth trip around the sun. (Calm down, I am only 59. When you turn an age, that is the end of that year and the beginning of the next, so don’t rush me.)
Like sand through the neck of a 20-ounce Coke bottle, so has been this past decade of my life. I just hope the next is not like sand poured out of a boot.