Christmas already?

I can’t tell for sure, but it seems like Christmas decorations are going up earlier this year. The reason I can’t tell is that it doesn’t feel like it has been a year since Christmas. I heard someone say yesterday that “it used to feel like three years between Christmases, not it feels like we have three a year!”

Much to my chagrin, I have joined the ranks of folk who claim time is going by faster now than it used to. I don’t want to get into an argument about physics or the relativity theory, and I am fairly sure that “real time” is progressing at exactly the same rate now that it used to. But is sure doesn’t seem that way.

I know what part of the difference in. When one is putting up with English, Trig, and Chemistry at the same time, hours may very well stand still. Now, on the other hand, doing what I love and am called to do, and getting paid for it, why, how could time not fly by?

But I am a little concerned, too. Much as I enjoy life now, and am learning to appreciate how quickly difficult or challenging times will pass as all times do, I worry that as we age, and as time picks up speed, we don’t miss out.

I remember watching the sheer joy in my daughter’s eyes of some of the games we used to play or adventures we would go on. I also remember we could do it all again the next day, and she had every bit as much excitement and eagerness and joy, though it was the same game or the same adventure. Children, often far better than adults, can live so entirely in the moment that it doesn’t matter what has gone before. What may happen tomorrow is irrelevant.

Jesus said we cannot control our height, our lives, or tomorrow. He challenged us to live today, and trust God for everything else. Can we do that, even as the today’s go by faster and faster? As we accept the fact that the next Christmas is around the corner, let’s live today with the joy and adventure of a child. And trust God for the rest.