Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Sips of Time


Right now I am sitting in the backseat of the AXIS van, sipping on the remainder of my strawberry limeade slush. My iPod plays Lifehouse in my ears. And we break / And we burn / And we turn it inside out / To take it back / To the start / And through the rise and falling apart / We discover who we are... (Song titled “Who We Are”). I watch the horizontal landscape pass by my window in fast forward, the fields and clouds blending together to create a blurred backdrop for my return to Colorado Springs. My mind likens the swift scene to the passing of time. I look back on my few decades of life and wonder where the days went. People often describe the years prior as “time slipping by,” as if there can be no control over how the minutes of each day are spent. To a certain extent this is true—the clock ticks forward without anyone’s permission—though I believe there is a way to exert authority over the moments that befall us.

How about not letting time slip by, but taking sips of that time instead?

It has occurred to me that rarely do we take responsibility for how we spend the precious moments that are allotted us. We feel as if we are slaves to the minute and second hands, the regulator between our first and final breaths. If we consider time as a liquid being shoved down our throats, the outcome is our constant disgust and our fight against it. If we instead consider time as a drink to enjoy sip by sip, we savor every flavor, every distinct ingredient that it contains. What if time is not a bird which flies away, constantly escaping our grasp, but a fluid which can be looked forward to enjoying—a delicate, delicious, delightful thing that we choose to take pleasure in by the sip? That perspective might change our attitudes. In fact, it might change our lives. If time is something that cannot be avoided, why wrestle it when you can commune with it? Why is time our enemy and not our friend? It seems to me that if time is a constant, our behavior towards it is completely within our control and our attitude towards it dictates our displeasure or content. Sip the time, my friend, and savor every passing moment, for it is indeed passing. And why waste the delicacies that are before you?

By: Heather1

Notes
  1. This was Heather's first trip with AXiS. Heather is currently a student at the Focus Leadership Institute (FLI) and will be going back to finish up her schooling at Evangel Universityin Springfield, MO. Every semester, several FLI students are able to be interns with AXiS and travel all around the country with us ministering to students.

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