Tomorrow may just be my favorite day of the year—Fall Back Day. In fact, when I woke up yesterday my first thought was, “Is it possible to take my “fall back hour” two days early?”
Our lives are so jam-packed, crammed full, insanely busy…what could be better than an extra hour in our days? One minute we think we’re in control and the next everything feels like it’s spinning out of control. What’s wrong with this picture? Surely this isn’t what Jesus intended by a more abundant life?? So I’ll gladly take that extra hour (or 60 minutes, or even 3,600 seconds, however you choose to look at it) and I’ll spend it a hundred different ways in my mind…then I’ll sleep in an extra hour tomorrow morning.
I think time is fascinating because our time in this world is limited. We don’t know how long we have, and we don’t have the same number of days. In his book, Becoming Real , Steven James writes, "As far as we know, we’re all the same age. Not that all of us are the same distance from birth, but we are the same distance from death." The time we’re given is absolute, with a beginning and ending and a middle that, for the most part, is ours to make the best of.
A friend recently asked me this question: “If you could go back in time to when you were 18 and give yourself one piece of advice, what would that advice be?” Assuming I’d actually take my own advice (a big assumption when you’re 18 and know everything), I’d tell myself to let God use everything in my life for good, and I do mean everything.
I’ll turn 50 next year, and looking back now I can see that my life so far has been one long string of teachable moments. Some of those have resulted in valuable lessons I’ll draw on for the rest of my time here. Others, unfortunately, were painful to no avail, their usefulness lost on me, and thus lost for God’s purposes.
The truth is that I wouldn’t go back to being 18 for anything. And I wouldn’t change my life, even if I could. The road's not always easy, and occasionally it’s just plain hard. Sometimes that’s just life, while other times it’s a consequence of my hard-headedness. But God is faithful, and I’ve learned that He can use my everything for His glory, if I’ll only let Him. So my goal now is to give it all to Him – good and bad alike. After all, he gave it all for me, and how sad it is when we let our suffering all be for naught. That’s a victory I’m not willing to hand over to the enemy.
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." ~ 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV)
When I woke up yearning for that extra hour yesterday, Steven Curtis Chapman’s new song, Heaven Is the Face , was playing on the radio. I lay in my bed, overwhelmed by all this man and his family have been through and how he is letting God use their pain to further His kingdom. Here’s a description of the new album, Beauty Will Rise (available 11.33.09), taken from www.stevencurtischapman.com:
“Created in the past 10 months in the walk through the darkness of the loss of his daughter Maria, and while God continues to meet him there on the journey…part lament, part praise, part grief, part hope, part wrestling, part pondering…these tracks resonate as Steven’s personal psalms.”Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not looking to be a martyr. But I do want to live my life as a book of personal psalms, singing about the journey from the mountains to the valleys, and everywhere in between.
“Heaven is our home. Let’s live like it.” ~ Steven James
