Fall Campus Newsletter Post: Sunrise, Sunset

I wrote the following for the WBU-Amarillo Fall campus newsletter.


Sunrise, Sunset

Where do the days go?  It seems like a few weeks ago we were planting flowers, school was getting out, and summer was just starting.  I have no idea what happened to July…somehow, I missed it.

As we get ready to start the Fall term, we already see the sun setting sooner, cooler days are just around the corner, and football is cranking up.  Fall has always been my favorite season.  I love Spring too, but the plants are just going in the ground then; in the Fall, they are mature and all the landscape starts to look grand with the cooler nights and rain.  And of course, there’s football.  Ever since my freshman year of college, and the experiences there with college football, I’ve loved the start of football season.  Now, it’s more about fantasy leagues than anything else, but there is still something magical in the air come the kick-off of football season.

The passing of time also reminds us of how fast life is moving.  When I was a kid, I thought the summers seemed to last forever.  Now, they are the blink of an eye.  Most people I talk to feel the same way…summer time seems to fly by now.  I finally heard an explanation of why this is so.  (No, it’s not some alien intervention with the orbit of the earth.)  It has to do with ratios.  When we were four years old, a summer was 6% of our lifetime.  When we hit 40, a summer is a mere 0.6% of our lifetime.  So relatively speaking, a summer seems ten times shorter to us at 40 than it does at 4.

All this serves as a reminder to us- don’t waste your life.  We can spend all our time on endless, worthless pursuits as inane as watching TV and staying busy procrastinating the things we should be doing, or we can be using the time we have (which grows shorter every year) on things that have lasting value.  Some things of lasting value are temporal, like time spent with family, or taking time out to finish a college degree.  These are worthwhile uses of our time, and will have value to us the rest of our lives.  Other things of lasting value are eternal.  Time spent with God, time spent serving others with no expectation of any payment, and time spent pointing people to Christ and to the glory of God are examples of eternally significant things we can do.  Again, they have value in this life, but they also have value for eternity.

Make a point to use some of your time this season, as you enjoy the changing of the leaves and the transitions in life, to accomplish some things of temporal and (especially) eternal value.  “For where people lay up their treasures, there their hearts will be also.”