Oh, the Dash

Oh, the dash—the life that we live between when we were born and when we die. It could just be a way of marking time. It could be drudgery. It could be a celebration. I confess that at different moments it has been all those things for me.  

When I sit playing a card game on my iPad, I may well be marking time. That can be okay. Over the past nearly four years, I have spent a lot of time waiting in medical facilities. Sometimes the brain just needs to “veg.” There can be faithfulness in this.

As my father witnessed much of what he had been a part of in building at his company begin to be dismantled, he didn’t find nearly as much joy in going to work as he had previously. He talked about “beating that d… drum.” Sometimes we just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other in order to keep going. There can be faithfulness in this.

We often think of celebration as being occasional—birthday, anniversary, Christmas, and more. I would like to grow in the discipline of finding joy and celebrating in each moment. I believe this would widen my heart and my vision to seeing where God is at work in places that often appear hidden. Today the radiation machine “glitched” shortly before my appointment so I got the opportunity to talk with a woman for whom today’s treatment would have been the last of 47! She is a retired physicist. With the short time we normally wait, I would never have the chance to talk with her. I might get to see her tomorrow morning as we make up for today’s glitch.

May I live my dash fully and faithfully.