Retreat Thoughts, Day 4

Imagine what Moses must have felt, staring into Canaan in the last moments of his life, knowing it would always be a step beyond his journey, a meal that he would never taste and yet spent his entire life preparing.  His life's work was to lead the people to Canaan, and as it taunted him from just beyond the Jordan, it must have seemed farther away than ever.  As the people prepared to journey forward, he prepared to make his last journey, to travel the last few steps into the land that awaits us all, just beyond reach and yet always near, the journey toward which we travel and yet never arrive until the end.

It's easy to think of life as a vast, empty canvas upon which we paint with the enthusiasm of our youth.  I do not pretend to have aged enough to know the pressures of time leaning against me, reminding me, through aching joints or fleeting memories or the passing of dear friends, that the journey in this place does not last forever, and whether we will it or not, the canvas will soon be filled with something.  It is our life's work, but often we wandered across it so unintentionally, so occupied with what we believe is pressing in the moment, that the footprints our feet leave do not have any appreciable pattern.  They are random, and while we could, perhaps, make some artistic interpretation of them, they have not been set there with design.

The alternative is to seize upon the canvas as the opportunity that it is, to paint with intention and purpose throughout our days, going about them with the sole focus of serving Christ in our present situation.  In this way, we are fully alive to what is before us, the gift of the moment, of the present, of now.  In this way, we are not so distracted that we miss what God is doing in and around us.  In this way, we do not make more of petty things than they deserve.

I dare not pretend that I have used all of my time here well.  Some of it, I will say, has been used well.  Some of it has been lived with intention, but much of it has been drifting, distraction, occupying my time rather than filling it.  And so I pray for wisdom and courage, for intention, so that I will remember that my time is fleeting, that my life has purpose, and that I might have the wisdom to glorify God in the midst of all I do.