Some of you have already taken that hours-long ride to your preferred vacation destination, while the rest of us patiently await our turn. My wife and I have learned to cherish those rides. My sons are 14 and 12 now, and time has started to get away from us. We know that with each passing day, we move one step closer to having an empty and much quieter backseat. There are some days where I deal with the reality quite well, and there are others where I feel like I shudder with each tick of the clock. One of my favorite movies of all-time, “No Country for Old Men,” also happens to contain one of my favorite lines of all-time: “You can’t stop what’s coming.”
None of us can stop the inexorable passage of time, and it seems to only speed by faster as we grow older. I can remember holding my firstborn at Rockdale Medical Center on a Wednesday night in 2006. Now, he is preparing for his first year of high school and will soon be behind the wheel of a car. Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 tells us, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” All time has godly purpose, whether we recognize it or not.
The coronavirus pandemic, if nothing else, taught me to live my life day by day. I try not to look backward because those days are gone, and I try not to look forward because those days are not promised to me. As we set out on our family pilgrimages this summer—Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, has become our oasis—remember to count each moment as a gift from above. One day, this ride, like all others, will come to an end.
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