"Time Stand Still..."

Riding home from church last night, the sun was still shining, however, just below the horizon. The faint remnants of a few wispy clouds brushed across the western sky, shades of pink and goldenrod reflected below, while the cornflower atmosphere above was starting to fade to black as it ran to the east.

I stared out the window reflecting on a day filled with the usual crests and troughs, some good some bad, some merely an annoyance. I gazed across fields and meadows at the splashes of colors in the dying day’s direction, watching some colors washing away, while others intensified…

Suddenly the reverie was broken by the greens and blacks of a fencerow overgrown with trees. The weight of the saturated air mixed with that earthy scent of dirt and leaves was strong and good. The rush of the foliage was quick as we drove within feet of the racing trees. Bits and pieces of the sky beyond made the silhouettes of this bramble look like an old flip-book with its herky-jerky motion.

Then as suddenly as this wall of branches and trunks and greenery had sprung up, it just as quickly vanished, leaving the now darkening horizon pop back into place, same clouds, same sinking sun, seemingly unchanged from the last time it was spied just a quarter mile back. Venus was a hand and a half above the line to the west. She was dazzlingly white as she streaked to the horizon, seeming to gain on the sun it painstakingly and futilely chased.

Another fence row charged up, as if a hunting animal was about to pounce on its prey, then without reason or understanding  deciding to run alongside for a while, pacing its next meal.

Just as mysteriously as it ran up, once again it disappeared without warning, and again the setting sun was visible. The clouds no longer reflected the heavenly glow. Now they were just shadows, painted across a fading light. Stars and planets began to wink in, above and further to the east.

Yet the sky seemed to stand still compared to the swift moving fencerows. As if it were mired in some heavenly quicksand.

It occured to me in that moment, this must be the grand difference between my waxing and waning years.

During my youth, time seemed to drag, as if it were trying to walk through some bog. It took supreme effort to plod through the stumps and weeds and water. Feet sank deeply into the bottom muck, threatening to pull my boots right off with each time-ridden step.

Now older, beginning the twilight years of my life, it seemed that life was moving at a breakneck pace. Children had grown and long since moved out. Grandchildren were beginning to appear. Though my younger years were filled with thrills and fun and laughs, they seem, from this backward glance, to have been shallow. Now that’s not to say in a negative, superficial way. No, these were important and noteworthy as well. But these later years seem to run deeper; the breaths are drawn in great, large, giant inhalations of air that are exhaled slowly and deliberately. What once was a dreaded abhorrence, is now a sought after desire. I want the slowness of my younger years, and yet, I possess the opposite. I blink and a year seemingly flies by.

We are an unsatisfied lot, we humans, we sinners. Nothing is ever good enough. No water slakes our thirst. No meal satisfies our bellies. No taste tickles our taste buds. We are forever complaining that things are too hot, too cold, too little, too much - the list is long and distinguished.

Thanks be to GOD we are saved from this insatiable life by the satible Jesus Christ, Who works to appease the Holy Father with His life lived satisfied, for us. We stand before GOD in our Oliverian clothes and echo, “more please.” Christ also asks for more, but not from the pot of stew simmering in the corner, but from GOD’S Cup of Wrath - meant for you and me. He stands resolute and stalwart in the faith and drinks it down during His life, upon the Cross and in the Tomb, so that by His suffering, pain and death, we might gain heaven itself.

In this life, I’m afraid I will always be unsatisfied to one degree or another. I pray that through the power of the Holy Spirit, I can be more and more satiated by the unfaltering Word of GOD and His precious Sacraments - that bring His forgiveness, life and salvation. LORD help me...