The blessing of no time left

It sometimes happens that I fritter away most of my walk with Spider in daydreaming or in indecision about what to pray for. Then, as I notice I'm rounding the last bend before home, urgency seizes me and I cast off prayer requests like a boat taking water.

It's sometimes good to have no time left-and to know it (Psalm 90:12). Actually, none of us has much time left, but only some of us know it. ("All men live under a sentence of death," said Woody Allen, the night before facing a firing squad in Love and Death. "But I'm different. I have to go at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. It would have been 5, but I had a good lawyer.")

My recent heart scare has been valuable only when I take it seriously; sometimes I don't believe it, and then I get lax again. The Scots of the 18th century invented something called the "communion season." For a variety of reasons (poverty, mountains, shortage of ministers), the Eucharist was administered only once a year, and boy what a difference it makes when you have only one shot at it till next time. No more luxury of dithering about whether or not you will trust Christ as your Savior. The preacher says, "Will you repent and believe, or won't you? You have two days to decide, then I'm leaving town."

My house is full of 22 years' accumulation of junk that I have good intentions of sorting through some day. If the house ever catches on fire, I will suddenly have no trouble deciding what I should save in the 10 minutes remaining.