REFLECTIONS
February 5, 2012
 
 
I love the Lord, for he heard my voice;
he heard my cry for mercy.
Because he turned his ear to me,
I will call on him as long as I live.
Psalm 116:1-2
 
 
Separation of Time
 
Years had passed, twenty of them. I felt anxious about seeing everyone again after all those years, but I also felt excited about it. I wondered how everyone might have changed. I wondered how changed they might find me to be. I wondered if those old feelings we had for each other, some warm and some tense, would be the same.
Most of us can recall such an experience, the meeting with a once good friend, or classmate, or old flame who from the separation of time had become a stranger when next you met. Whatever had connected you with them before did not connect you still.
Yet the meeting would neither feel like meeting a present-day friend nor meeting a stranger for the first time. There was uneasiness that both of you felt, but neither would mention it or quickly overcome it.
Time, the effects of it, is hard to explain. It often serves as a great healer, overcoming grief, pain, and hopelessness. But it also brings about separation. With the passage of time feelings reduced almost to memory, both bitter and sweet, are not quickly or easily rekindled.
So that class reunion, the first one for me, introduced all of those feelings. With some of my classmates it didn’t take long to pick up where we had left off. But others were more like tip toeing across a sensitive surface, trying to find a place to begin—not knowing how to start fresh, but hoping not to begin where it was before.
Separation from God can be like that too. Most of us go through a time, fueled by self-sufficiency, when we are consumed by matters of life, and God is not a part of them. After separation of time from him, a meeting will feel as that of a stranger, uneasy, distant, unworthy—wondering how changed He might find us to be. And though the bond with God is easily restored, it is much easier to stay connected and not allow there to be a separation of time in the first place.
But either way, say a prayer today—even if it is only to say I love you.
Especially if it is to say I love you.
 
You are the light of the world,
RichardÌ
 


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