I am not a parent, but I was a teacher, and I have had the
experience of encountering kiddos I taught several years after they had left my
class. I may have taught them when they
were tiny, and now, they are teenagers, or, in the case of those I worked with
when they were in high school, they are adults now. I have experienced something similar with
people I went to school with. In my
mind, the kids who were in fourth or fifth grade when I graduated from eighth
grade are perpetually fourth or fifth graders.
That is, until I see them again at Basement Dweller reunions, and then I
think, oh yeah, I grew up, so they did too.
At these times, it’s tempting for me to think, oh geez, I’m
OLD! But then I have to take a step back
and get some perspective. I spent almost
three years working at the same school as my former sixth grade homeroom
teacher. What must it have been like for
her, seeing me in faculty meetings “all grown up”? In the words of a song by the band They Might
Be Giants: “Time is marching on, and
time… is still marching on!”
And because time is a pesky thing like that, life can have a
tendency to creep up on us. Before we
know it, a whole month has gone by, or even a whole year. Our experience of time can also be
relative. A week may seem to drag on and
on endlessly, only for us to look back at the end of a month, and think, where
did it go?
As I look toward the end of this month, next week, I’m
having this feeling of “Wait, where did February go?” Looking toward the future, I think, May is so
far away, but it’s not! It’s only two or
so months away. We’re running out of time
to get ready for my brother’s wedding at the end of May. I’m running out of time to get my RCIA
candidate ready to complete his initiation by Easter in a month and a half. WHERE DID THE TIME GO?
If you want to think of something really mind-bendingly weird,
consider how God might experience the passage of time. God is eternal. He has always been and He will always be. Yet, He cares for each one of us, even though
our lifetimes must be less than a blink of an eye to Him. Take a moment today to thank God for His constant
care for you.
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