Endless Summers

Remember those endless summers you enjoyed as a kid? Hot days, warm nights, and more time in a single day than we could possibly fill. We woke up to the sun in our windows at 6:00 AM and it was still light when it was time to go to bed that night. At first those summers never ended, but as I got older it seemed like I was just getting into vacation mode when it was time to begin the count down to the first day of school. I wasn't sure if time was actually running faster or if the days were simply getting shorter, but it was obvious to me that something was changing. Like you, I began looking forward to each new year thinking it wasn't possible that it could go any faster than the year before. Yet year after year it does.

I developed my sense of time during those summers, and today it seems like all those New Year's celebrations are a recent memory. Don't look now but the tax deadline just passed us, there won't be enough time for two or three major projects at work, or a couple of projects at home, or the vacation plans that are never long enough. Nor will we be able to remember what we did on the few holidays that we got; then it will start to rain again, we'll focus on getting ready for Thanksgiving, and then the Christmas season will shoot past us like a rocket powered sleigh dragging a line of weary reindeer. Maybe time isn't circular like a merry go round going faster and faster, or linear like cars with stuck accelerators on an endless road with no speed limits, but it doesn't ever slow down.

I was reminded of something during one of my recent classes that I would like to pass on, because it's so simple and so important. In the Genesis account of the creation, God rested on the seventh day. But think about this for a moment, God wasn't tired: He didn't rest because He couldn't go another day without a break. He chose to rest which tells us that rest isn't about recuperating from exhaustion; it's about taking the time to focus on what's important. Time may not be going any faster than it did during those endless summers, but we still need to slow down. In fact, at least one day every week we need to take time for ourselves, our families, our friends, and our God. Get off the merry go round, slow down and make this your New Years Resolution. Take a little bit of your life and enjoy what is close to you, because time is like money, at the end you can't take it with you.