Time
Oh! What a crowded world one moment may contain!
...F. Hermans, The Last Constantine
Perhaps I am the last person in the world to talk about taking time to appreciate the things that go unnoticed in the mad rush of our modern living. Between conference dates and dinner club dates I use up about two hundred air tickets a year, to say nothing of buses, trains and car rentals — and I have eaten my way through enough banquets to stock a good sized commissary with fried chicken and ham and raisin sauce.
But oddly enough, the things I've stopped to relish and the things remembered now are not concerned with travel or excitement or strange places. They are most ordinary incidents and scenes and flashes of scenes of no import at all. I could have the same things to remember and relish if I'd stayed on Elm Street all my life.
I heard a preacher once who in the course of his sermon reported on his first visit to Los Angeles. "We rented a car," he said, "and I piled the family in it and started out for a ride. Our first object was to see the sea, but after we got on one of your California freeways, our only object was survival."
It is the way with life. Things have a way of getting complicated and they pile up on us and we are so confused trying to get them all done that we miss the things of great wealth that are right under our noses.
But once in a while there comes a rare flash of awareness, a sharpness of perception and appreciation
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and gratitude — that seems to make time stand still for a moment, and we stop and drink in the experience as if it were the last one we were ever going to have. The pity and the waste of it is that we do not do it more frequently. And often the reason is that those lovely things surprise us in the most unexpected places and moods — when we are rushed or blue or angry or just too preoccupied to notice. Such things, for me, have always been surprises and have come about in the most ordinary ways.
I walked down to the foot of our yard once, clad in boots and groaning under my breath. The yard had not been landscaped yet, the soil was clay, and it had rained all night. Now you have never been bogged down until you have tried to walk in wet clay. I sank in up to my ankles and pulled the boots out like suction cups with every step. I was on a dismal errand, to retrieve sheets and towels and socks and dungarees. The clothesline had broken, scattering them in sullen silence in the muddy clay. We'd had dozens of grassy yards, but no clothesline had ever broken on them, I thought. No. The one clothesline that had to break in my whole life, had to break in this yard on this morning. I was bitter.
By the time I reached the edge of the wooded ravine that bordered the foot of the yard, I was bitter enough to cut the clothesline in inch-long pieces and end its career forever. Any clothesline
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that couldn't function any better than that didn't deserve a second chance. Any clothesline.....
I saw it then. I saw it and forgot to cramp my toes on the next step, and pulled my foot right out of its boot. I hung on to a tree and kept my raised foot in the air and looked.
The ravine ran down into a moss-carpeted glen and the sun dappled it with light. And in the very center was a dogwood tree in full bloom, bent over as if in ecstatic protest that it had all the rain and all the blossoms and all the beauty it could bear. The tenacious raindrops clung to everything trembling as they clung, and catching the sunlight in a million tiny prisms, and the moss carpet and the dogwood tree and the raindrops seemed to be sharing a secret of shimmering beauty and it was as if a million notes of music hung in the air.
I put my foot down slowly, felt for the boot, missed it, and stood with my bare foot in the clay and watched almost without breathing. What a flagrant extravagance! It was as if God just flung beauty everywhere and anywhere without any thought as to where it was going! It was so quiet down there. Was the dogwood tree bowed down with blossoms and rain, I wondered, or was it bowed down in worship? And for a moment, time stood still, and I worshiped too — until a saucy chipmunk ran across the moss carpet and turned and looked up at me and scolded and broke the spell. I found myself laughing aloud at him, and he scampered away
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to his morning chores, and I turned away to mine. The wretched clay was still there and the clothes had to be rewashed and the clothesline was still a culprit, but somehow the sting was gone. For I knew where there was a dogwood tree!
There have been other moments when time has stopped and they are all equally insignificant in themselves. It is what they did for my soul that counts.
Like the time I'd just put a bowl of pansies on a cherry piecrust table and our baby kitten settled himself alongside them and tucked in his paws and dozed in the sun and Gary, who could just reach the top of the table, buried his nose in a pansy and said solemnly, "Breath of God." A pumpkin pie in the oven was just beginning to send its spicy promise through the house, and that and the child and the kitten and the bowl of pansies were all mixed up in a sudden sharp awareness of how good God had been to me.
How can we explain these perfectly ordinary things that suddenly make us grateful? They hardly make sense in themselves.
Like the one time I had coffee before church with friends at a garden cafe and we sat at umbrella-sheltered tables outside and the sun sneaked under the edges to warm our backs. The pungent scent of cinnamon toast was mixed with the smell of good coffee, and the talk was talk that would warm your heart. And I detached myself from the talk for a
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moment and thanked God in my soul for toast and coffee and sun and Sunday mornings and friends and church — and went back to join the conversation with a lump in my throat.
And the time my boys brought two baby goats down from their mountain retreat and told me they were in the car and I didn't believe them. But sure enough they were — two black bambi-like creatures, bundles of riotous good humor and affection — and all legs. Once out of the car, they scampered down the street and the boys called them back and they stopped in tangled confusion and came back gleefully as if pleasing us was the one thing they wanted to do most in all the world. And the boys fed them with nippled baby bottles and they guzzled noisily and the milk clung to their whiskers. And watching, I got another foolish lump in my throat because this was a rare moment filled with good things.
And one Christmas, at the end of a party, there in a gracious living room when my friend Martha spun sheer magic for us on a harp. Now you have never really felt "Christmassy" until you have watched a beautiful woman play Christmas music on a harp. The reflections from the Christmas lights played on her hands as they plucked the strings — and then she began to play the old familiar carols and the guests began to join in until we were all singing softly. And I thought my heart would burst with the beauty of it. It was a moment of sheer
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enchantment — ephemeral — and time stood still.
Some of the moments you relish, not because they were happy, but because they were tender or because they brought hearts together somehow. Like the time the boys called from outside that our dog had been killed by an auto and when I went out, they were standing there in the rain with a shovel and Teddy's body in a little red wagon they'd borrowed from a neighbor in order to bring him home. We lifted him carefully and brought him up on the porch out of the rain and knelt around him and wept unashamedly, big, salty, therapeutic tears.
But the time I relish the most, and perhaps as much now as I did when it happened, is the time concerned with the story in this chapter. It was back in the Cub Scout days and those days are hectic, as any parent knows. Mornings were especially so, for I was determined to pray with each boy separately and in private. They'd been using their prayers to admonish each other and complain about each other, each one asking God to please straighten the other one out, and our morning prayer time had become almost comic. Separate prayer times seemed the best solution, and it turned out that it was. But it was devastating to the early morning routine and I had to work it out with military precision to get it all done, get each one on his own school bus, and get myself off to a morning radio show. No matter how early I got up or how carefully I adhered
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to the schedule, an unforeseen problem would arise each morning with unfailing regularity to throw us off.
On this particular morning the problem was a Cub Scout badge that had to be sewn on Steve's uniform. And of course, being a little boy, he had waited until the last minute to tell me about it.
"You mean now?" I wailed. "Steve, I simply can't."
"But I've got to have it on. It's den meeting this afternoon — and right after school!"
"But can't it wait — or be pinned on — or something?" My voice trailed off helplessly when I saw his face.
"All the other kids'll have theirs sewed on." He waited hopefully. I wavered.
"I'll baste it on with big stitches for now. It'll do for one meeting. And tonight I'll sew it on right." I was already running for the needle and thread. I sewed it on with silent impatience, and all but pushed him out the door to get his bus. At the gate he turned and grinned. One of his front teeth was missing and I suppose at that time he was the homeliest kid in the state of New York. But something happens to a boy in a Cub Scout uniform. He stands taller and straighter, with an air about him — a sense of grave responsibility. I stood taller too, and grinned back. "Sew it on straight," he called, "with little stitches. So
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it'll be neat." Then the bus came and he was gone.
I stood at the door and thought, "He will never be that precious or look that funny again." And, "I'm glad I sewed the badge on." And, "It meant so much to him. What if I'd been cross and refused and then he got killed today and I never had another chance?" I made a fervent vow to God that I would do every little job in the future as if it were my last chance to do it. And then I thought of what he'd said — "Sew it on straight with little stitches so it'll be neat." And then I cried.
A bit dramatic perhaps. But a story was brewing. And it takes a bit of doing to brew a story. You feel it first. Then you write it. And after my radio show that morning that is exactly what I did. I wrote it for my weekly Sunday story program. And I called it
* * * * *
I HAVEN'T TIME
They've let me be with you alone for a little while, Son. I had something for you I didn't want anyone else to see, for no one else would understand, and I wanted to be
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alone with you when I gave it to you — to see if I could make you understand.
They're all so sorry for me and so careful of my grief, but none of them understand.
I wish I knew where to begin. I do not, for I don't know when you stopped being an all absorbing, exciting something new, and started being —
It's hard to explain. One day it's all bottles and formulas and wakeful nights and exhausting days and baby books with all conception of time lost, and the world — the unreal, unimportant world — drifting by. And the next day it's an acute sense of time lost, of youth lost, of strength lost, of confusion, of disappointment. Or at least that's the way it was with me. You weren't anything like I'd thought you'd be, like I'd dreamed you'd be. You were a nightmare of noise and raucous laughter and muddy feet and bad manners and clumsiness and mischief who wouldn't, couldn't learn anything. You were a constant source of irritation.
Tender moments? There were no tender moments. I was too busy. There wasn't time. Tonight it seems as if my whole life hinges on that — there wasn't time. There wasn't time to hold on to precious moments, just to hold on to them while time stood still — knowing their value. There wasn't time to laugh, to
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love, to discover all over again through your eyes, the wonder of living. The opportunity was there but I never saw it. I never saw it —
Our encounters were never part of the mainstream. They were always interruptions.
"Mommie — hey, Mommie!"
"Where have you been? You're a sight."
"Don and me were frog hunting."
"Don and I."
"And look what we found. He's —"
"Ohhhhhhh! Kip!"
"He's only a baby."
"Don't come near me with that thing!"
"He won't hurt you. He's cute."
"He's filthy and slimy. And you're filthy too. Frogs. I loathe them. Put it down under the porch."
"I'll put him in a can. Hey, Mommie — may I —"
"Kip. Not now. I have to go out. To a meeting. And Mrs. McCauley is coming to stay up with you. Come in and get cleaned up. And hurry. And hold your stomach in, Kip, please."
"Mommie, I know where I can get a dog."
"Hurry. And do straighten up. Mrs. McCauley — a dog?"
"Yes. He's a —"
"No. No dogs."
"He's a beautiful sort of a semi-half-way
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Collie. Sort of an all-American. I can get him for noth — "
"No."
"I'd take awful good care of him. He loves me. He jumps up on me."
"He'd jump up on everything else too. I hate dogs."
"We can train him!"
"Muddy feet and — No. No dogs. That's final. Come on. Hurry. Of all the times to come in late with a harebrained scheme. Kip, come on."
We hurried. Mrs. McCauley came and I went out to my meeting. We talked no more about the dog. I didn't have time.
When you came to me about the Cub Scout business, Kip — I didn't see you — earnest, eager, your two front teeth missing. I didn't stop and treasure the fact that you'd never look quite that funny and precious again. I just saw my clean kitchen floor and the afternoon flying by, and you were an interruption.
"Mommie!"
"Kip, for Lord's sake, wipe your feet."
"Sure. Mommie, could you go for a walk with me? I have to find ferns and leaves and stuff and tell what kind they are, for Cub Scouts. And could you hear me say my Cub Scout oath? To see if I know it? I have
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to pass a lot of tests and get a badge. Is that a cake?
"Yes. And you can't have any. It's for a meeting."
"Oh. Could I lick the frosting bowl?"
"I already put it to soak."
"Oh. How about the ferns and leaves and stuff? Could you help me?"
"Oh that. Kip, will you stop just standing there and get a move on? Wash your face and hands and change your shirt if you're going to be around here. I have people coming —"
"But my ferns and leaves and stuff — "
"KIP, I HAVE MORE THINGS ON MY MIND THAN CUB SCOUTS!"
"I thought — I was gonna show you that dog. If you just saw him, you'd —"
"And no dog!"
You must have passed your tests — I never asked you about them. I didn't have time. I didn't even stop to think that you must have passed them when you came to me a few nights later — I was reading —
"Mommie —"
"Hm?"
"The Cub Scout badge. Will you?"
"What Cub Scout badge?"
"I told you all about it at dinner!"
"Oh. Will I what?"
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"Will you sew it on?"
"On what?"
"On my shirt! I earned it! I told you! It goes on my pocket. Sew it up straight with little stitches, so it'll be neat. Oh. And I earned something else too. An emblem. To sew on my arm. In Bible Club."
"Oh. That's nice. Now goodnight, darling."
"But Mommie —"
"Kip."
"But Mommie, this has to get sewed on, too. It's for learning my verses. They both have to get sewed on."
"Mmmm. That's nice darling."
"Look, Mommie. I'll show you. There's a verse to go with each page. The black page says you can't go to Heaven unless you know Jesus. Did you know that?"
"I never thought about it."
"Well it's like — if we were both on Long Island. And we wanted to jump across the ocean to Spain. I could jump out farther than you could, but neither one of us would get to Spain. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. D'you see?"
"Uh huh. That's lovely. Now goodnight, Kip."
"But the next page — that's the red one. 'The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.' I know them all. And there's one
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more. 'He that believeth on the Son of God hath eternal life. He that believeth not is condemned already.' "
"Um. Kip, goodnight."
"Mommie. Do you believe?"
"I laid out your — do I believe what?"
"Do you believe in God?"
"I believe there's some sort of a God, yes."
"You have to do more than that. You have to believe what God says. That the Lord Jesus is your Saviour."
"Kip, you're stalling for time."
"You look so pretty by the fire. It turns your face on and off. I wish I could stay up just once and sit by the fire and talk."
"Well, you can't. Kip — Kip. Your little verses are charming. I don't want to be cross. But you make me cross. Now goodnight, darling." You still stood there.
"Kip!" I said.
"Goodnight, Mommie."
You were gone, and I went back to my book, relieved. We didn't talk of the wonderful things you'd discovered. I didn't have time.
The next day you reminded me to sew on your Bible Club emblem and your Cub Scout badge before you went to school. But I hurried you off. I went to an all-day meeting and didn't think of it again at all. I came home, rushed and tired, and hoped you'd be there
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so I wouldn't have to worry about you because I had plans for the evening.
You were there, all right, looking for me, waiting for me — with some exciting piece of news that just couldn't wait.
You darted across the street to meet me, so quickly, so quickly —
— And then there was the screech of brakes and the crash of glass....
And then they brought you into the house, only it wasn't you. It was never you again —
Oh, my darling, I had to get away from them, from their well-meaning clumsy attempts at comfort, from their philosophical claptrap. You had all the answers, you — knew — God. And in a few hours they will take you away and I'll never see you again. I had to be alone with you.
Kip, I'd give half my life now, if I could have another chance to sit by the fire and talk with you. For you had the truth, and you have gone into the shining and I am left behind in darkness — and I cannot even remember what you said —
Something about "the blood of Jesus Christ." I can't remember the rest —
And "He that believeth on the Son of God —" I can't remember the rest —
They are coming to see if I'm all right.
Kip, I'd give my life to be alone with you
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now and they won't let me. Darling. I have your little book. With the colored pages. And the verses I'll find to go with them. I'll find them and learn them —
Kip. I know you can't see this. It's your Cub Scout shirt. I sewed on your Bible Club emblem. And your Cub Scout badge. I sewed them on straight, like you said, with tiny stitches, so they'd be neat. I had time, Kip. I have all the time in the world....
* * * * *
I mentioned that I relished this flash of awareness as much now as I did when I wrote the script. And I do, for this past Christmas I sewed something on Steve's uniform again, only this time it was an army uniform. He was home on leave and about to embark for Germany. And I thought as I sewed it on, that they were both gone now, the house was empty and I would never have another chance to make time stand still while I captured a moment of awareness — at least not with them. Everything to be done for them was done. He interrupted my thoughts. "Sew it on straight with little stitches," he said tenderly, "so it'll be neat." And we both chuckled, but the lump in my throat was something to swallow.
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Most of the jobs we have to do in life are little ones. And much of life centers around the humdrum. You don't have to travel far and do the unusual to find something to appreciate or a job to do with pride.
I think Christ centered his life around ordinary things to show us that it could be done nobly. He was born into the home of a carpenter, brought up in the shadow of a carpenter's shop, worshiped quietly in the neighborhood church, increased in "wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man" by being faithful in humdrum things. And even in manhood when His ministry became far-flung and exciting and He was famous, He found His greatest pleasure in the fellowship of ordinary people. And in all His life He probably never traveled beyond the radius of 70 miles. And within the radius He met Bartimaeus and made him see, calmed the storm and caused Peter to walk on the water, met the lame man and caused him to walk, raised Lazarus from the dead, showed Nicodemus the way of eternal life, met Zacchaeus and turned his life upside down, cured the demoniac, healed the centurion's servant, fed the five thousand, and as John said, "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."
Christ took time to be quiet, to appreciate and
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relish a golden moment, to be grateful to God. He never hurried. His Word admonishes us against frantic haste and encourages us to meditate on the good things of God and to be grateful.
The woman in the story finally remembered the golden moments and sewed the badge on "up straight with little stitches, so it would be neat." She had all the time in the world. But it was too late. One of the most bitter tragedies in the Christian's life is to let those moments go by unnoticed and unappreciated — and to bring God jobs finally completed — too late.
Things do have a way of getting complicated and they pile up on us and we are so confused trying to get them all done that we miss the things of great worth that are right there about us. Our flashes of awareness and appreciation of golden moments are too few. But the golden moments fly and if they are not relished they never come back again to give us another chance. I relished a few. I wish now that I had relished more.
