gonna miss this

I suppose you can hold on to time all you want. That won’t stop it slipping. You can try to stay alive as long as you like. Death will come. Inevitabilities rage on in this world, and confrontation with these realities bring us to the very limits of our humanity. We realize our own powerlessness to truly do anything, to change anything, to be anything.

We sense a transience to this life, and right here is the divide between hope and fear. It’s a brave thing to face into the wind and declare “I will not fear, for You are with me,” to assert that “to die is gain.” Yet this is the only way to live faithfully in the changing turmoil of this world.

You can lock yourself away from love, and it’s true, you’ll never be broken, but neither will you fully live. You can hoard and guard your time, and it’s true, it will never be wasted, but even the best cause might turn out to be one massive triviality. You can do everything in your power to live life optimally, only to hit the dirt in a box like the next person. As Jon Foreman writes,

Friend, all along

Thought I was learning how to take

How to end not how to break

How to live not how to cry, but really

I’ve been learning how to die.

Optimism is a good thing, but I think there is such a thing as thoughtless optimism—one that doesn’t fear because it simply doesn’t dream of the full cost or realize the implications; because it doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. It takes courage to face change, but it is braver still to hope in the face of a fixed outcome. All who follow the Master are told, in no uncertain terms, to count the cost:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciples. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?

As we come to crossroads, there’s always the question of cost. Changes mean costs, and the value we place on any one thing measures how much we’re willing to give up to gain it. We’ve all been given time, but it’s not a thing owned by any of us. We’ve all been given life, relationships, energy—do we slow down enough to realize that we can be wasting time in our very attempts to optimize it? People last forever, while the dishes, reading reports, and that bike ride will all be long forgotten in a matter of months.

Sometimes the best expenditure of time isn’t as much strategic as it is organic, isn’t as much measured or measurable as it is extravagant—like dumping a watering can over a flower, instead of using a little cup to pour at its base. It’s doing something that doesn’t appear productive so that a friend might be blessed; staying late to clean up when you didn’t sign up to help; all those countless things that aren’t our responsibility, but offer golden opportunities for the gospel to shine through us to others.

~~~

I’ve been  thinking through these realities and many others on the eve of my graduation. I’ve always been ready to jump into the next thing, excited for the next door—the daredevil in me coming out, I suppose. But these two years here in Sanford have surpassed anything I could have imagined. They have stretched and changed who I thought I was; they have challenged and humbled my aspirations and desires. This body of believers has become family. In May I’ll be leaving home to go home.

I’ve learned in a new way how beautiful this thing called the church is—with all it’s imperfections, annoyances, and flaws. I’ve seen the gospel lived out on a daily, earnest, mundane level, and I will never be the same. I’ve seen how common, seemingly unnecessary service lends meaning and richness to friendship, how the back door of the kitchen can really be the front door, in a sense, to the church. I’ve found a place among those who get their hands dirty, and learned lessons from those making meals and cleaning up bulletins that I couldn’t have learned in the classroom.

Of course not all the learning could be described as wonderful. His grace has confronted my own selfishness and pride in ways I never would have chosen—ways that have hurt and wounded others. I pray for growth, for patience, for humility, for a more all-consuming love for Christ, and He takes me seriously. He answers in ways that bring Him glory and increase my dependence on Him.

Two months from now everything will change. I won’t hear the bells of St. Andrews pealing out into the Sunday morning air as I drive to church. I won’t sit down with my three roommates on a Saturday night for dinner and updates and inordinate laughter. I probably won’t be drinking a half gallon of coffee a day and arriving at midnight wondering what in the world I’m doing. I won’t sit in a classroom surrounded by these friends I’ve come to know and love. I won’t walk out of a midterm and see professors and classmates playing impromptu football behind the school. I won’t be picking oranges during the break and running in late from a walk around the pond. I won’t be introduced to the odd armadillo on my morning runs. I won’t be walking into chapel with brothers and sisters to drink deep and be refreshed in the midst of a busy week. I won’t be biking home in the dark with the moon and stars hanging all luminous and close just above.

Things change, and I’ve always known I would leave here one day. Yet now that it’s brushing up so near I find myself holding on, wanting these days to linger. It’s an odd, unfamiliar feeling for me in many ways. The lines of a certain country song have been ringing in my ears of late:

You’re gonna miss this,

You’re gonna want this back,

You’re gonna wish these days hadn’t gone by so fast.

These are some good times,

So take a good look around. . .

So yes, I want to make the most of these next weeks to savor, to give, to delight in the now. But I pray He keeps my heart from hesitating and turning to doubt as the next chapter comes up. I pray this holding of the moments doesn’t turn into gripping so hard I squeeze the life out. I want to let go of the way I think things should be and fully embrace exactly what He sends, when He sends it. I will, by His grace, charge my soul to believe and wait for Him, to follow His providence and not go before it nor stay behind it (in the words of Samuel Rutherford).

But this I call to mind,

And therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;

His mercies never come to an end;

They are new every morning;

Great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

“Therefore I will hope in Him.”

Without a doubt, the good given is always the best good.