It's Time to Take Time...

I've honestly learned that time is something I don't have much of.

I have taken time forgranted all of these years, and it has so vividly proven itself to me in the past few months and weeks. God has graciously given me this awesome gift of time. I see the many places and situations He has allowed me to go through and to, whether they be as outstanding and humbling as the mission trip to Jamaica where I met my now husband or as disgusting and humiliating as my college years in which I drug His holy name through the streets of Bowling Green. Time is the one thing God has granted me. It's an amazing thing to look back on it now, to see where He's lead me, and to realize the decisions I made for myself without once calling on His name. Those are the times that I greatly struggled, and I find myself now going through times that appear as if I'm on mountain tops. All the same, the time itself is what I have taken thought of today.

As I was given the opportunity to visit an assisted living home for Alzheimer's patients last week, I walked up and down the halls noticing how vicariously I was living my life... I live so task-oriently. I must get one thing done and move right on to the next. I frustrate easily. I forget to love whole-heartedly and show the joy and peace that a child of God should be illuminating each day, but as my husband and I spoke with a preacher of God's word who now is stricken with this terrible illness, I realized how God is longing for my time. This man of God lived and is still living his life, though he might not understand it, for the Lord. He seemed confused or distraught as he walked the halls with us, but as we started to leave, Brian asked him to pray for us, and just like I'm sure he did all those years past as he lived for God, he bowed his head, and prayed the most simple yet elegant prayer I've ever heard. The time it took for him to say those childlike words was maybe 30 seconds, but it impacted me to take the time to start living and longing to spend my time with God.

I've always heard to live everyday as if it is my last,
but seeing that old man live like that;
hearing my husband tell me he is going to love me like everyday is his last and then see him actually DO it;
and then witnessing my nana sick with Alzheimer's, knowing she is declining, and leaving her home thinking as if it may be my last time with her...
All of these things are enough to make one STOP and take time with God. I've learned to be thankful for the time I've had not just for my own sake but with others. I'm so blessed.


ECCLESIASTES 3
TO EVERYTHING there is a season, and a time for every matter or purpose under heaven:
A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted,
A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up,
A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
A time to get and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away,
A time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak,
A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

What profit remains for the worker from his toil?
I have seen the painful labor and exertion and miserable business which God has given to the sons of men with which to exercise and busy themselves.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He also has planted eternity in men's hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy], yet so that men cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

I know that there is nothing better for them than to be glad and to get and do good as long as they live;

And also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor--it is the gift of God.

I know that whatever God does, it endures forever; nothing can be added to it nor anything taken from it. And God does it so that men will [reverently] fear Him [revere and worship Him, knowing that He is].