Earlier this week I had some miscellaneous time. You know that awkward in-between amount of time where there isn’t enough of it to be worth going home and then leaving again, but it’s still significant enough that you need to fill it with something? Well, that’s what I had. I had just left from meeting with one of the sweet girls in the youth group on her school lunch break, but my yoga class wasn’t due to begin for another 45 minutes. That gave me half an hour of miscellaneous time to kill. I decided to head toward the gym anyway, and as I drove I passed a cemetery. On a sudden impulse, I yanked my wheel to the left, turning into the parking lot across the street. Grabbing my journal and a pen, I dodged some mid-day traffic and sought out a particularly toasty spot in the sun. I wrote. That is, I wrote until I realized I was sitting in a patch of nettles and an ant pile.
After dancing around to make sure all the little critters were removed from my person, I decided it would be safest to sit on a grave marker. Before I plopped my butt down, I read the inscription: Amy M. Fox, 1889-1974. I wondered about her life. She must have had a very full one; she lived to 85. What were her passions? Her struggles? How many times had she fallen in love? Did she like broccoli? I was so lost in my thoughts that I barely noticed the three people who had come to pay their respect (thankfully not to Amy). They eyed me suspiciously. I am pretty sure they didn’t approve of my seat choice. I considered moving but decided then that Amy wouldn’t mind.
I turned my attention back to my journal and remembered something just then. It was something that Pastor Jason said in church once. It went something like this:
When you look at a tombstone, there is a name and two significant dates: the date of birth and the date of death. What is most important, though, is the dash between the dates, for while the dates signify the beginning and the end, the dash represents the journey. And it is just that: a dash. A race. It is over so quickly and yet what we do with it matters so much.
Somehow sitting on that tombstone put it all into perspective for me. My life is short. In the blink of an eye someone could be sitting on my tombstone and enjoying the afternoon sun. I need to make use of every second. I need to make every moment matter for Christ. I hope you will do the same.
"How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog–it's here a little while, then it's gone."
(James 4:!4)
