STRESS!! It consumes, divides and doubles. You would think that a little quiet time would be welcome, but that’s not always the case. In fact, for many of us quiet time may invite the most intimidating minutes of our day.
A quiet awakening
I should have welcomed opportunity for more sleep, for my night had been nearly sleepless. Yet after awakening to near silence before dawn I turned off the alarm and remained awake.
What was on my mind? Everything. And I must confess that my first thought was not,
This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118:24
We arose as usual, beginning the necessary routines of each day. The dog stretched and hurried toward the door. Routine, but required, we set out on today’s event full journey. Charlie followed his nose along previously blazed paths oblivious to my attempt of a hurried pace along a cold continuous sidewalk.
Running from work
A jogger ran by, buds in her ears and pulse-monitoring watch on her wrist. She tracks more than time and steps. On warmer days I sensed her daily pace, caught in her mini-marathon between school drop-off and her gym or coffee shop. A man drove by in his loud pizza-logoed car, bobbing his head to a beat of some music inside.
Charlie walked further, but I was no different from these running to and from work. I could have been busy in some song or sense of life’s sprint, but this day all was quiet except multiplying messages of a mind caught up in my ‘what to do next’ and ‘why did I do that.”
Once I had driven miles between accounts with my mind also cruising well above the speed limit of a time-constrained goal list. I once listened to anything louder than my passing thoughts; nostalgic classics or current upbeat songs by young musicians full of life. Yet work always approached with the day’s music fleeting to where carefree sounds, singing and smiles fade into hope of a different journey.
As I thought ahead to work I considered a place filled with well-meaning souls, busy building barns most will never see. Eight or so hours without running to places where we have time to count the costs before the laying of foundations of futility.
An unexpected glimpse at quiet sleep
Unexplored paths led by tugs of long leash from long-wandered straight paths of purpose, we returned to a road taken by only a few headed to their cul-de-sac of journey’s end.
A sight behind an open blind of dawn-lit window imprints image of both past and future. The man lay sleeping peacefully in a hospital bed, between his room’s window and rising metal tree with clear bags of liquid extending long lines dripping life into failing flesh and relief into the delay of decay.
Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away.
A mere breath, vapour, a fleeting shadow are the lives of mankind. Souls caught in the image of God trapped in failing flesh. What question of man precedes such astute observation though the looking-glass of life?
In the day of trouble the Lord delivers him; 2 the Lord protects him and keeps him alive; he is called blessed in the land; you do not give him up to the will of his enemies.
3 The Lord sustains him on his sickbed; in his illness you restore him to full health.
Charlie had inadvertently led me to a path where in the near silence of our morning walk I had to remember our path toward a final rest. So many have passed this way before us, yet today in an unwelcome misstep I glanced briefly into my own future as well as a sudden step back into a memory of a deathbed before.
By the sweat of your face You shall eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
It had been brought into my own living room. She had been sick for months and they couldn’t figure it out. Doctors were busy and work went on while family and life rushed about. A trip to the ER told more of the disruption of life to come.
After giving up on work and her parents moving in, trips from doctor to hospital and home again… to a bed not our own…
Once I sat by her inadvertently on her oxygen tube. It was that kind of sudden realization that the breath of life we take so granted becomes perilously cumbersome to draw in for just one more moment. She would live fully just two score and ten, one more month and one more night to say ‘Good-bye, I love you.’
The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labour and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Who knoweth the power of thine anger?
even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
So teach us to number our days,
that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Charlie and I turned off into home, just a short way along our temporary path of these days. I remained lost in contemplative prayer and unexpectedly fond memory, for I knew just how temporary was this life for her and for me.
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live…
“..and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
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