I love to take walks around our peaceful neighborhood as soon as the weather starts cooperating.
Well, I guess it’s peaceful if you don’t time your walk right before school starts or lets out (we live close to the junior high school).
One of the things I love most about spring-time walks is that new life is literally “springing” up everywhere.
I’m especially thankful this year for all the colors of this season, given that our town was hit hard by a mid-January ice storm.
It’s almost four months later, and Perryton residents are still cleaning up downed branches and assessing the damage done to their trees, homes, and other structures.
The saying “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone” could have been the front-page headline of The Perryton Herald the week following the devastation.
I have lived in the Texas Panhandle pretty much my whole life and have never seen anything like it.
Then, on March 6, high winds and dry conditions set the stage for an onslaught of Panhandle wildfires that consumed almost a half million acres, took precious lives, and destroyed ranch homes and animals.
So sad.
It makes me want to cry just thinking about it.
Up until this year, I have said on more than one occasion, “It seems like Perryton is tucked inside a protected bubble.”
It doesn’t seem much that way anymore.
We live in a world that is constantly changing.
That’s why I believe it is so important for all of us to seize and savor every moment God has given us on this earth.
One evening a couple of weeks ago, I was out walking and listening to my new favorite album by MercyMe, Lifer, when a beautiful bed of tulips caught my eye.
It was so stunning, I decided to stop and take a picture of it with my phone.
While the quality of the picture isn’t that great (where’s Angela Manross when you need a gorgeous photo taken?), I think you might agree with me that it was a “Kodak moment.”
Flowers don’t wear their glory very long, so we need to savor them while we can.
I walked by the same tulip bed this afternoon and all the petals are gone.
It’s the same with life.
The longer I live, the more I realize that the average life span of about eighty years is like the petals of a flower quickly falling away.
First Peter 1:23-25 says,
See that you do love each other, fervently and from the heart. For you are the sons of God now; the live, permanent Word of the living God has given you his own indestructible heredity. It is true that: ‘All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures for ever.’ (PHILLIPS)
While believers in Christ will live together forever with Him in eternity, our time on earth is precious.
It is our only opportunity to share the love and life of Christ with a lost and dying world.
After going through a cancer scare last year, I don’t want to waste any time.
I want to seize and savor every beautiful moment that God gives me until I breathe my last.
In short, I want to seize every moment that He has gifted me with on this earth to share His life and love with anyone willing to listen.
I pray that today’s post pulled on the dream-strings of your heart, causing you to realize that time is short, whether for the baby in the cradle or for the man or woman in his or her senior years.
Dear reader, I would love to hear what dreams God has placed on your heart and the direction He has given you for seeing those dreams materialize on this earth.
If you enjoyed this post, then I think you would enjoy both of my books where I share the undiluted, unpolluted love and grace of God.
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