Aged wine is tasted. Ancient redwoods are protected. Long life is never to be taken for granted. While my daughter Lauren turns 40 this year, time doesn’t stop for anyone including me. I am 69.
For my birthday this year, Lauren invited me to spend a weekend together just with her. We watched the 2013 comedy, About Time. It’s about a man’s special ability to travel back in time to redo life. Having the power to fix a mishap sometimes can turn out well but other times it’s not what you expect. In the end, we discover that it’s important to live life the way it is. Life is about both good times as well as bad times.
As I age every year, I marvel at how our daughter has come of age! It used to be that I pay for the meal but now she fights for the check. I used to be the one who worked on ABC national staff but now she works for ABHMS. I used to be the one who worried about sending Lauren to the best schools we can provide and now she is doing this for her 3 kids. She used to live under my roof but now she has her own roofs to shelter me from the weather. We reminisced about what we used to eat but today I appreciate the fact that Lauren introduced me to veganism.
We usually live for the moment. We seize the day. But it’s when we are blessed with the length of long life that we are then able to see how precious time is. It was 40 years for the Israelites to wander before coming back to Yahweh. It was 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness before he accepted his Father’s mission. Thanks be to God for our sake. In 1958, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I am thankful to be living this long to see the arc of history and to have a soon to be 40-year old daughter to teach me about the valuable gift of time.
My daughter took time away from her husband, children and her work to spend 48 hours with her Dad. She gave me the gift of time to which I am very thankful. Finally I thank God who has given me and continues to grant me the gift of time to be married for over 45 years, to have my adult children teach me about 21st century things, to have 6 grandchildren to introduce me to new music on Spotify, and to once again celebrate that whatever happens every new day is truly a gift from God.