It’s that time of year again!
When you’re a parent and your kids go off to school; your “year” didn’t really start in January, it kind of begins on their first day of school. It’s like: there’s a “first day of school” and a “last day of school”. Those, are the “years” that really age us, and our kids.
Inevitably, this always draws my attention back to the most tyrannical of all human systems, “time”. I think about it and it’s pace. I think about how fleeting it is, and, what a gift it is.
My dad has always talked about “time”, in a very Ecclesiastes type of way, “there’s a time for everything” and he’d also say, “don’t rush things”. As a kid, I never really understood any of that. I wanted to be a 16, when I was only 15, and then, I wanted to be 18 when I was 16.
Time. Only God knows how much of it we actually have. We try to rage against that, but it is, what it is. We want to believe that there should be an order to time? For instance, old-school work order used to be, “last one in, first one out”; if budgetary lay offs were ever a concern. In other words, the last person who was hired by the organization, would be the first one laid off. However, in life, we have a perceived, desired, order. For instance, when it comes to death, we want it to be, “first one in, first one out”. One could argue that there is no better order to time. But God. HE is eternal and all-knowing. We’re told, that HE works all things together for the good of those who love HIM and are called according to HIS purposes. In our finite brains, when God calls Home the last one in, we have a very hard time making any sense of that. Even though if we are HIS, we know that scripture tells us that HE doesn’t conform to our limited ideals of time. One day is like a thousand to Him, and a thousand days are like one.
Who the heck are we to know the mind of God? and what the heck does this have to do with first day of school pictures?
It’s just that the concepts of both, having time, and being out of time, are not only related they are intertwined. I can’t help but to think about it.
We so desperately want to dictate what “should” be the order of our timelines. Our perceived, correct order. First one in, first one out. And, when things don’t line up with our perceptions we’re naturally angry and disappointed. There are days when I hate time. This measurable distance from one memory to the next. It sucks, and it goes by way too quickly.
Time can be waisted, squandered, misused, and underappreciated. It can also be a gift, it can be precious, it is limited, and it helps us measure the immeasurable.
We may be walking our little one’s to their first day of school and feel like we have plenty of time. Or, they are driving off to their first-day of their senior year in high school and we’re running out of time. Out of time when our children are home with us.
Our time here is limited, our “first days of school” are limited, our time holding our children on our laps is limited, but our time with HIM will be eternal.
One day, when my friend group has grown older, I will log into social media and I won’t be flooded with “fist day of school” pictures. Some day, I might not even know when school begins, because I’m not in that season anymore. Some day, I’ll lose track of time, and it’ll be ok for me because I won’t have anywhere I need to be. And, one day, I’ll be in eternity, and I will no longer be a slave to time.
I’m grateful for this time of year, when our kids go off to their first days. I think it’s a beautiful reminder of a few things: First, it reminds us to not waste a day. Second, that God is the only one who is not a slave or subject to time, HE is infinite. Lastly, that we need to be grateful for time, even though it is fleeting, it’s also irreplaceable.