Seize today

I burglarized my parents' house to purloin their photo albums with the Christmassy intention of plundering them for thirteen choice photos to have a calendar made at a copy and print service store. Big mistake.

The heist went without a hitch but the trip down memory lane was exquisitely painful. Have you ever looked at an old picture of yourself in a crowd and remembered exactly what you were thinking at the time, and it wasn't pretty? How about an album full of those? What of the terrifying realization that this life, nearly spent, was not a dress rehearsal for anything but was the play? And no retakes?

As the prophet Elisha conversed with an Aramaen court official named Hazael, he was staring at him "…with a fixed gaze until Hazael felt ashamed. Then the man of God began to weep. 'Why is my lord weeping?' asked Hazael. 'Because I know the harm you will do to the Israelites,' he answered" (2 Kings 8:11,12). What an unbearable burden is knowledge of the future.

Here is the joyful part. As long as you have breath --- "as long as it is called Today" (Hebrews 3:13) --- you have opportunity to write the rest of the play. Someday there will be no time to forgive, to restore, to love again. The rose will have shed its last petal. O glorious reprieve! Today, I embrace thee.