Time is linear for all of us.
Time is elusive. We can’t see it, feel it, or smell it, but we know that time exists and that it profoundly affects our lives. We experience time in its linear dimension. If you are a person of faith you may believe and understand that God created time. But when you think deeply about this revelation you may also deduce that, if God created time, then God must exist outside of time’s constraints. So time isn’t linear for God. The beginning and end and everything in between are God’s province all of the time as we would understand it, but we can’t.
Since time is linear for us, there is a beginning, middle, and an end. We are born—the beginning. We live—the middle. We die—the end.
Time is ephemeral. As my wife and I have miraculously made it nearly seventy years through time and more than fifty of those years together, we are acutely aware of the speed at which time is passing. Each morning we read the local obituaries. We comment on the short or long lives of those who have ended their time with us.
It is clear, however, as we talk about a person who lived a few or many years, that all life is short. We live just a brief time in this reality and then we move on. I remember living with my parents on Ozark Avenue in Gastonia, North Carolina. I was four or five years old. I remember living in a small house across from the woods that are now Eastridge Mall. I played football and Army with Ricky Parks. My teacher at Warlick School, then Ranlo Elementary, was Mrs. Bollick. I remember moving to Greenville, South Carolina where my father became a student at Furman University. We lived in what looked like Army barracks. I remember riding the train from Greenville to Gastonia, where my grandmother met me. We went to a grocery store and rode a taxi to Rex mill village. I remember my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Hardin; my seventh grade teacher, Mr. Floyd; two special high school teachers, Mrs. Valetta and Mr. Phillips; and two excellent coaches, Coach Franklin and Coach Saine. I remember joining the Army, riding to Fort Bargg on a bus from Raleigh, packing my clothes, and enduring my physical exam and my shots. I remember my drill sergeant, ironically named Sergeant York.
These are fleeting memories of an ordinary life, memories that might be described by millions across our country. Life is lived inside the constraints of time and then it is nearly gone.
My friends are dying. I still have a lot to do, but time is passing through my fingers like a mountain fog, visible but here and gone in an instant. Time is flying by. I can’t stop it. Can I do more with it? I hope so.
And this is where, perhaps, we can agree. If time is short (and it is) we need to do as much with it as we can. We need to tell the people we love that we love them, and we need to thank the people who have meant something to us for what they have done. We need to get the important things done. The important things revolve around three sets of relationships involving friends, family, and faith.
I have a friend who is very sick. I need to see him, and I need to see him today.
I have a family that includes my wife, children, grandchildren, and siblings. I need to tell them I love them, and I need to do it today.
I have had a lifelong faith that started when I walked down the long aisle of a Baptist church and told the tall preacher, who was my father, that I wanted to accept Jesus into my heart and be baptized. Tears flowed from my ten-year-old eyes when my father’s strong arms lifted me out of the water of the baptismal pool. Something happened to me that day, which I can’t explain. I believed that Jesus actually did come into my heart. I believe it still. Tears still come to my eyes when I think about how my life has been shaped by a simple faith in a loving and forgiving God.
If your life and mine have intersected, I hope you remember me well. I hope you think of me as kind and honest and faithful and I sincerely hope that I have taken time to know you and to engage in the important matters in your life. We have so little time. We need to use it wisely, and at the end, maybe we can look back and say that it was all worthwhile. That is my plan for the time I have left. But only time, elusive and ephemeral, will tell if I succeed. I hope I do.
