Photo by Chandan Chaurasia on Unsplash
Ahhh… February. Amazing. Surprising. Wintery February! I bet there isn’t a person reading this who has yearningly longed for February. Unless I have readers in the southern hemisphere! (Which the dark depression of winter chides me for even thinking!)
Here’s something I bet no one in the world has thought of.
Do you remember how exciting it was around February 14, when you celebrated Valentine’s Day in your elementary classroom? How important it was to have a shoebox to take to school. You would decorate it just right and make it an absolutely beautiful mailbox for all those valentines you just knew you would receive at the Valentine’s party! What a disappointment that, hard as you worked and planned and created, it was never nearly as beautiful as Marsha’s or whoever. Of course, it might have had something to do with the fact that your shoe box was your grandfather’s cigar box. Too small to hold all those cards. Or your father’s work boot box. It was too large to be completely decorated by the time the class had finished. (At least it would hold a lot of valentines!)
And the moms made real, home-made valentine cookies, or sometimes cupcakes, to go with the red Kool-Aid. (Now, not permitted as the red dye might stain the carpet.) Carpeting! We never had carpeting in our classrooms! None of this stopping by the bakery for the most recent yuppie concoction.
Then it was time to open your love letters. What excitement! You knew you would have them forever. You loved them. You oohed over them. You giggled over them or swooned over them with your friends. Two days later, you relegated them to the back of your closet. You never saw them again. And you never missed them.
Isn’t that funny? How quickly we forget items that look so important at the moment. We LIVED for the entire time between getting back to school from Christmas break (not winter holiday) until February 14th. And its importance is now as the smallest fragment in time.
That makes me think about life. The Bible tells us we are but a breath, a snippet of time. Our planet and its entire lifespan are but a snap of the fingers of God. And we think it’s so important, so necessary, so all-encompassing.
Photo by Wil Stewart on Unsplash
As the advertising hucksters say, “But wait! There’s more!” Let’s not lose the understanding that a thousand years is as a day, and a day as a thousand years to God. Let’s not think of ourselves so much that we lose the big picture. Here we are. Right here in the smack middle of everything. But guess what? (Here’s the good news!) It’s not about us. It’s about God. Let’s keep our minds focused on Him. Wherever He got that time to give us here on earth, there’s a lot more where that comes from for us to live in eternity. Don’t miss it!