There’s Never Enough Time

“THERE’S NEVER ENOUGH TIME”         Deuteronomy 34:1-12         Dana Douglass

Many years have passed now, since a friend, the center fielder on our men’s softball team, Ed Melville, took his own life.  Ed was a thoughtful individual, a gifted cabinet maker, a terrific ballplayer, who seemed to have so much to live for.  I was thinking of Ed this week because the day of Ed’s death was the quintessential October day.  The sun bright in a clear blue sky.  The foliage at its absolute peak.  The air cool and crisp.  Whenever we get a day like that in October, I think of Ed, and I wonder — how could anyone not want to live at least through a day like that?

But then, I don’t know what it was like to be him.  So, mostly I just feel profoundly sad.  And part of what I’m feeling is my own sadness, because on beautiful fall days I can’t get enough of life.  And, I find myself counting — how many autumns might I have left?  These thoughts are not morbid; they just speak the truth that life is finite — and mine is way more than half over.

For me, one of the saddest stories in the Bible is the one you heard this morning — the story of Moses standing on a mountain top looking over the promised land realizing that he would not cross over and enter it.  Forty years tramping around the wilderness with a bunch of people who could always find something to complain about had brought him to that place, and then came the crushing blow!

When he finally had it all but made, when the Promised Land could be seen stretching out before him as far as the eye could see, God spoke and said, “This is the place; you can’t go there.  And Moses died in his one hundred and twentieth year, with his eyesight still clear and his vigor unabated; and after a month of mourning, the Israelites went in without him.

Don’t you find that sad, heartbreaking?  Moses standing there within sight of his goal, a river-crossing away from the realization of a dream, and dying before it could come true.  When I think of all the effort that went into getting there, and the unfinished business his death left dangling, I feel profound sadness — for myself — because the truth is: for each of us there is never enough time.  Each of us has a promised land, or two, or three — a dream, a goal, something to do, someplace to go — each of us has a promised land that we will never cross over to and enter.

What do we do with that?  What do we do with the truth that our days are numbered — “seventy years, perhaps eighty if we are strong, and then they are swept away like a dream” — what do we do with that?

We could just refuse to think about it.  Go on thinking you will live forever.  Denial might keep sadness at bay; but, it will also diminish joy.  What makes life precious is the fact that it’s limited.  If our days stretched on and on with no end, then no day would really matter.  And, since no relationship would ever end, love would be a mere shadow of its awesome self.  So, embrace that truth and give each day its allotted value.  By the way, someone once said, “Death is the gift we give our children.”  Eventually it’s good that we get out of the way and give the next generation full freedom.

After we have accepted the fact that there is never going to be enough time, we can begin to make the most of the time we do have.  I heard about someone who had the following message on their answering machine: “This is not an answering machine,” the voice said, “it is a questioning machine.  Who are you?  What do you want?”  Answering those two questions could be the most important thing we do with our lives.  Who are you. . . really?  What do you care about?  What do you want most to do with your life?  If you never even ask the question, you’ll never come close to making the most of life.

Remember the movie, “The Bucket List”?  I still remember the phone call I got from my mother after she and my dad watched that movie.  She said they loved it, that it had a lot of good humor; but that,  at the end, she and my father in tears.  The movie was about moving through the list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket.  Did my mom and dad end up in tears after the movie because their bucket list was long and not likely to get any shorter.

Name your dreams and bring at least some of them to life.  There are some things that can be accomplished in a heartbeat.  I remember sitting with a young couple once in the last days of the husband’s battle with a brain tumor.  He’d been unconscious for nearly a week when suddenly he opened his eyes, turned to his wife, and said, “I love you more than you will ever know.”  One less piece of unfinished business.  We can all think of someone who desperately needs to hear something we have to say: “I’m sorry, I forgive you, I’m proud of you, I love you.”  But of course, you’re going to live forever, so why not wait awhile?

It is a worthy endeavor to figure out who we are and what we want.  It is also important to accept that there is never enough time, or energy to do everything — there are some dreams that will never come true.  There’s a story about two boys who decided to dig a hole to China.  They got their shovels and dug and dug for several days.  But, they also wasted time playing games while they were in the hole.  After some days had gone by, an older boy from the neighborhood came by and asked what they were doing.  “Digging a hole to China!” they replied.  The older boy laughed out loud at their dream.  “You’ll never get to China,” he said contemptuously.  At that, one of the boys picked up a jar of bugs he’s captured and said, “So what if we don’t, look what we found on the way!”

Dreams are great.  But sometimes we become so preoccupied with the top of the mountain that we completely fail to see the beautiful things around us on the way up.  Celebrate the journey.  Celebrate how far you’ve come so far.

It also might be helpful to think of life in a larger context.  A study of people who have had near death experiences reveals one thing most had in common.  As their lives passed before them at the moment of near death, they had the overwhelming realization that this life was but an instant in what they knew had gone before, and what they were certain would come after.  Maybe Moses got to a different kind promised land.  Is it possible that these earthly lives are part of something much bigger?

Finally, to those of us living in a goal oriented world, comes this reminder: God does not judge us by how successful we are, but by how faithful we have been.  Through God’s eyes, even though Moses did not cross over to the land of his people, his life must have looked wonderfully complete.  He had dedicated himself to doing what God asked of him.  He’d set a people free.  He had seen the glory of God.  What a life!  Incomplete?  Maybe.  Faithful?  Certainly.

There is never enough time to do it all; hopefully we can find time to some of what God want us to do: love God with all our heart, and love our neighbor as ourselves.

Advertisement