Saturday, February 22, 2020

A Reminder When Life Creeps Up on You


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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