Streams of Mercy

After fourteen years alone, my mother remarried at the age of 62. What a wonderful blessing this was for all concerned. She had a loving husband, my brother and I had a wonderful father, and our children had the world’s greatest “Papaw.” Thankfully, they were blessed with seventeen years together, and we were careful to make many memories together in those years, memories that comfort and encourage us all to this very day.

On their fifth wedding anniversary, I gave them a small framed print with these words:

Time is….

Too slow for those who wait,

Too swift for those who fear,

too long for those who grieve,

Too short for those who rejoice,

But for those who Love . . . .

Time is Eternity.

There’s so much to be faced in the living of our lives. Waiting, fearing, and grieving, all bring us burdens to bear, and times of rejoicing seem the shortest of all. It’s love that’s the timeless one. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things…Love never ends.” ( I Cor 13:7-8)

I think a lot of time these days, and as I grow older, time is precious. When I was a seminary student, one summer I was part of a pastoral care team in a Presbyterian Retirement home. A dear friend there, in her 96th year, wrote a poem and one of the phrases of that poem is in my heart to this day: “Lord, help me to make the most of where I am in time.” In the book of Ecclesiastes, the “preacher” reminds us, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven … and God makes everything beautiful in its time.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 11) In Psalm 31:15, the psalmist reminds us, “My times are in God’s hands.”

Time – sometimes there’s too much of it, sometimes too little. What’s important is that we make the most of where we are in time. It’s good to be reminded that our times are in God’s hands and that God makes everything beautiful in its time.

Elizabeth