In The Days Of Thy Youth

Summer colds are the worst.

I’ve been down with one for a few days, in fact, you can say it was a lost weekend. A trip to Urgi-Care on Saturday morning, sixty dollars worth of prescriptions, and I still feel pretty bad this Monday morning. But I’ll make it. Besides, sometimes an un-planned day off from work is a very good thing. It gives me time to reflect on things in my life beyond the cadence of duties and responsibilities associated with my job description.

This morning I’m thinking about my brother – he of the wasp attack I mentioned in an earlier post. I came across a photograph of us, fairly recent, in my youngest daughter’s collection this weekend. For maybe the first time, I realized that we are grown men at this point in our lives. We have a tendency to ‘freeze’ ourselves in our own memories, untouched and unhindered by the reality of time and days gone by. To me, he is still my partner in crime; building tree houses at the pond I mentioned, and taking out the dirty Nazis from our vantage point high in the sky. At the very least, he must be the same confidant that he was when we both went through our self-inflicted rough patches in our twenties, and the ‘cupid’ that introduced me to my wife during those strange, unpolished years.

We are yet still those things and many more; thus he can never really be a Lt. Col. In the United States Air Force. And I can’t possibly be this man I see in the mirror today, staring meekly down the barrel at age fifty just over the near horizon. How did this happen to us? Where did all the years go? I perish the thought, but if indeed those years went by at such an accelerated pace, are they doing so even now, and unnoticed by me?

I’ve recognized a trend in my life, and it is not something that I’m finding myself happy to express this morning - I am wishing my life away. When I get to work, the first thing I think of is that “I wish it was four o’clock” or “I wish it was Friday.” Soon enough, the wish is granted, and the deal becomes a reality, and another day or another week is gone from my life. In fact, it would be honest and truthful, if I got down to the crux of the matter, to state that because of that train of thought, I know where the years went. Those years were squandered by the mere granting of a wish – of my own making.

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon writes, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;” That is a strange verse to choose for today, but it has many layers of depth that I find relevant to my own life. I can honestly say that I did remember my Creator in the days of my youth, but it is a youth that has long since passed. Some evil times did indeed happen to find me as I grew older, and there will surely be more to follow in the days and years ahead. But the key this morning is the remainder of the verse, because it stops me and makes me reflect and evaluate myself, which is what the Word of God should do.

I am not at the point in my years where I can say that ‘I have no pleasure in them’. But there may be a time fast approaching where that may be the case. Instead of dwelling on that, I should be seizing the day (Carpi Diem!) and concentrating on the here and now. God has blessed me in so many ways, and all too often I take that for granted.

It is good to have a family and friends, when so many have lost their loved ones. I should be thankful for that. It is good to have a job when so many have lost theirs during this failing economy. I am thankful for that. God will send many more things into my life in the future, things that I can neither comprehend nor imagine. Some may be good, and some might be bad, yet He will use all of them to draw me closer to Him. I will be thankful for that.

Even if it’s something as simple as a summer cold.

The Brothers Johnson, and their cigar...