Several years ago, my husband and I had to face a huge failure in our lives. We had been living a life many would call "the American dream.". We had bought our first home, he had a really great job, things were going well. Within a year the economy began to take a turn and his commissioned position was not looking as bright. After making several decisions that were probably not the best at the time, we lost everything. Our home, our cars, our security, we were bankrupt. The stress of everything was terrible, our lives were a shambles and we were scrambling to hold on to anything we could. I don't know if any of you have suffered a dark place in your life, but my value as a person felt shaken.
It isn't until years later, a bankruptcy, two moves and a lot of penny pinching that we are back on the right track. As the old saying goes, "Hind sight is twenty-twenty". First, I have to be transparent, we did not ask for God's blessing in any of the decisions we made leading up to the purchase of our first home. We felt blessed to be able to do so, however, it was a blessing undeserved. We saw the chance to take it, we desired it and so we reached out and took it. We, as a couple, had put a fair amount of our value into the stuff we had. We tried our best to drive the right car, wear the right clothes and look the part of middle class America. Our value was in stuff. Everything we did was to amass more stuff, better stuff, improve our status. When we lost it all it felt as if we lost our life, what was owed to us, our inheritance. Inheritance. That word got me thinking, and my thoughts led me to a memory.
My dad loved collecting wheat pennies. I remember at a young age realizing this and I began searching out these treasures for my father. They were so valuable to him that he paid me ten cents for each one, enough motivation as a child to send me looking under vending machines and watching parking lots to collect more pennies. Even as an adult, if I found one of these rarities, I would peek into whatever room he was in and ask, "Hey, dad, I found a wheat penny, how much you gonna give me for it?". There was no inflation on my finds, ten cents was the contractual agreement and they were never worth more. What dad may not have realized is the value I placed in those small exchanges, much more than my ten cent reward.
I never understood the value of these moments in time until they were gone. I could ask for these pennies as some inheritance from my mom, some tangible piece of those exchanges. But, my inheritance doesn't lie in a thousand wheat pennies, it lies in the brief 35 years I was able to spend with my father. In comes the forehead smacking moment. My inheritance is time, our value is T-I-M-E. The past few days I have searched for a verse to invoke the feeling I am trying to express and literally as I write it came to me. In Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 KJV, it says, "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; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace."
There is a time for everything. When we invest one more hour of time working while our children beg for our attention, we put our value in work. When we pass by the hungry homeless man on the street as we walk into church, we put our value in religion. When we eat our dinners in front of the television instead of surrounded by our family at the table, we place value in famous people. When we meet a friend for coffee and spend more time posting the calories we ate, miles we ran, new purchase we made, we put value in social media attention.
Now, I write about these issues because they are my issues. Trust me when I say, I am guilty of all charges. But, I seek out these flaws to invoke change in myself and, hopefully, someone else. So, my second head smacking realization came here, of the years I have left in my life, my value so to speak, where will I spend it? A very wise woman, my mother, once told me L-O-V-E is spelled T-I-M-E.
So, on this eve of a made up holiday to celebrate love, I will leave you with a blip from one of my favorite bands, "Where you invest your love, you invest your life.". It goes without speaking where God invested His love, me, you, our families, our neighbors, that homeless guy on the corner, the Goth that walked into church last Sunday, the kid whose bruises you accidentally saw. Where will you invest your time, your love, the value of whatever time you have left?
No comments:
Post a Comment