It is only three days until my wife's cancer surgery, and I sat on the back porch this morning just watching two butterflies in our backyard garden. They flitted and floated in seemingly aimless directions, paused for a moment to sample the nectar of a flower, and then quickly moved on. How free they looked, I thought. They appeared to be content just to live for the moment, I fancied, floating on the breeze, never minding where it carried them or where they'd end up. Why are we not more like them?When its time has come the butterfly falls to the Earth and returns to His kingdom. Yes, I believe that God knows even the smallest of Earth's creatures. It never considers why it lives or when or how its days will end. Why is it we humans -- the crowns of His creation -- fret as we do about everything? Why do we complicate our lives, and in so doing, miss out on so much of the sacred gift of life that we've been given? Why can we not live free and unencumbered as the butterflies?
When our time comes, we exhaust all of our resources to gain just a few more months, weeks, days -- whatever it takes -- to hold on to life; hold on to a life that we may not really be living anyway. Why can we not accept that, we too, will one day fall to the ground or simply go to sleep, and awaken in His care, safe in His kingdom?
Perhaps Humanity's greatest curse, as well as a blessing, is that it's endowed with a profound intellect that is driven to ponder things too deeply for its own good. We busy ourselves with all manner of things that, in the end, will amount to little of any consequence once we're gone. We spend precious little time considering the simple things that life offers us for free: The blush of a rose, the sea breeze upon our faces, the sound of a newborn's first cry. It is the devil's own handiwork indeed when Man burdens himself considering his place in the world, his very purpose for being in it, making his days more stressful and complicated than they need to be, and worst of all, blinding his eyes to his Maker's grandest creations.
Being close to mortality these past few days has given me a new outlook. There is so much that I do that will not follow me beyond the final stroke of the clock. Children are suppose to be our immortality, and yet even they are not spared from the ravages of Time. I want to make my life count for something, as we all do, but mainly I want to live life -- take in as much of it as I can -- while there is still time. I've realized that time is not a friend to man but a mortal enemy. It is, by every measure, a merciless enemy to us all, and when it runs out there is no compromising, no bargaining for more of it.
I do not want to fret another minute about things that are beyond my control, things that just don't matter. I have wasted far too much time already playing that game. Time is God's gift to us, not to squander on aimless pursuits, but to savor in the brief span that He has given us. Life is like a breeze of wind that carries the butterfly aloft, but then, with its abating, drops it to the ground with little fanfare. May we all ride the Winds of Grace He has gifted us with while there is still time.
