“Time is Filled with Swift Transitions”
Those are the first words of a song I’ve sung with others numerous times in worship services. I was reminded of the truthfulness of those words in a humorous way. I ran into a man whom I had not seen in a number of years. He told me that he almost didn’t recognize me because he hadn’t seen me since I started “dying my hair gray.” I guess that my hair was still brown the last time he saw me (which was quite a while ago).
This week, I am being reminded in a more serious way about how true those words are. Our two youngest grandchildren are planning to leave two different homes in two different towns and head off to two different universities. It doesn’t seem possible that this could be happening so “quickly.”
I remember an event that seems like it happened yesterday. In reality, it took place a number of years ago. It happened the night before we took the older of our two children (not grandchildren) to Freed-Hardeman University. All four members of our family were sitting on the bed in which Donna and I slept in Dexter, Missouri. There was not a dry eye to be found anywhere in that room.
We were bravely trying to convince one another that this is what our daughter had prepared for, that she would do well, that she was entering into an exciting and rewarding time of her life, and a lot of other positive things. All of that “positive spin” kind of went away when her “little brother” said,
“But nothing will ever be the same again.”
He could not have been more correct. After his sister left to continue her education, some things would seem the same when she came home. In reality, though, they would not really be quite the same.
After that night, the four of us would once again sit around the same table to eat in the same house. We would even do some of the same things we had always done. However, after being away from home for just a few weeks, when our daughter came home for a weekend, a holiday, or for the summer, it would just be different somehow.
It wouldn’t be that much longer before both of our “kids” were away from home. It seemed that the transitions were happening more and more swiftly. In what seemed to be a very short time, the number of people around (or across from one another at) a table during a meal had gone from two to four and back to two.
In the intervening (and seemingly short) years, there have been changes in the number of people around that table. Come to think of it, it is not even the same table. When our family is together now, there are now ten of us at a different table in a different house in a different town in a different state.
The departure of our two youngest grandchildren from their respective homes to pursue a university degree is a definite reminder of those first words of that song I’ve sung so many times. As they continue their “swift transitions,” it is my prayer that those grandchildren will remember and seek to live by the words that are the actual title of that song.
In fact, it would be a really good idea for their “Grampy” and all of us to…
“HOLD TO GOD’S UNCHANGING HAND”
AUTHOR: Jim Faughn
