on time

 

Have you ever watched The Dark Knight Rises? If you have, I’m sure you remember the near-unbearable suspense climax as our favorite heroes fight desperately to disable a time-sensitive nuclear bomb. One moment too late, and an entire city could be wiped out. It is a race against the tirelessly ticking clock.

I just pulled up the clock app on my phone and watched the second hand go by for a full minute. Quite literally, I saw an entire minute of my life disappear—lost forever. Irredeemable. And I thought how odd it is that we do not respond to life’s ticking clock the same way we respond to a Hollywood time bomb.

Think: our lives are forever ticking by. Seconds pass on a tireless rhythm, and with them pass hours and days and weeks. Time is like a gun to our backs, pushing us closer and closer to the End—an End which history tells us we must inevitably reach, be it by death or Rapture. No act of genius or heroism can stop the ultimate Clock.

So where is our urgency?

Why are we lounging in our lazyboy recliners instead of perched rigid on the edge of our seats?

The only difference between our lives and the peril of Gotham City is that we have absolutely no idea when it might all stop. Shouldn’t that sharpen our senses rather than dull them?

People say it all the time: “Oh, sorry, I’m just so busy right now. I don’t have time. Maybe later, okay?” It’s the ageless excuse to avoid things that are hard, things that are unpleasant, things that just don’t seem like a priority. I just don’t have time.

Liar.

Don’t you understand? If you are honest with yourself, time is all you have. The plot twist is that you have no idea how much. So spend it wisely.

For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While they are saying, “Peace and safety!” then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober.     - 1 Thessalonians 5:2-6

ocean shores

 

 

I remember the three of us sitting on my bunk bed, elementary-school aged, playing with Woody dolls and Lord of the Rings action figures. I remember when, in a picture like this, Ben would have been the shortest. Two months ago he and Hannah graduated from high school, and in two weeks Ben is moving to Idaho for college. I kind of hate them for growing up, even though I was the first to move away without them, the first to go away  to school and get married. We are each other’s oldest friends, and I hope that never changes.

sebring light

 

I could not have been ready to go back to Florida after eleven months of absence. Coming back to people I last saw on the other side of the world, to a place where the softness of evening light never fails to break down the hard shell around my heart—I should have expected the tears, I suppose, but I really thought I could maintain my masquerade of strength for seven days.

Maybe I did, in some ways; I only cried in front of a few, though I wanted to cry to them all. Not tears of mourning or discontent, but tears of raw, long-buried pain. The pain of eleven months without the encouragement that can only be found in fellowship with other believers in the Truth, eleven months of being hardened by the unrelieved presence of Darkness. There is an unmistakable Light in Sebring, Florida that I haven’t yet found anywhere else.

I'm so afraid
Of what you have to say
Cause I am quiet now
And silence gives you space

I'll never be, be what you see inside
You say I'm not alone, but I am petrified
You say that you are close, is close the closest star?
You just feel twice as far, you just feel twice as far

And I’ll fall, and I’ll break, and I’ll fake you out…

“Fake You Out” by Twenty One Pilots

the johnson family

 

I don’t think it gets any cuter than this. Megan, Adam, Isaiah, and Toby make up a truly beautiful family—and not just in the standard sense. It’s hard to find people more in love with the Lord than these! They have been an encouragement and inspiration to me ever since I met them during my first visit to PA, and I’m so thankful for their godly example of what marriage and family were designed to be.