Keeping Time

Plans had changed and preparations needed to be made. My schedule, which was once empty would not remain that way. Okay, let's make the best of this; turn up the music and get started! As I searched for what was to be my soundtrack for the next couple hours, my phone rang. A call I had to take. When I said goodbye two hours later, my preparations had only reached the halfway mark, I'd not danced to one note, and the sun was perilously close to setting. Some things --including my dance party --were just going to have to wait until morning. But the night wasn't over yet. Another phone call and hours in the ER. Standing for hours by her bed, singing softly to calm her; the sun was beginning to rise. Things I had planned still had not come to be. Things I had not planned --would never plan, came to fruition. This was not the way I'd expected to spend my time; this was not the playlist I wanted to hear. In fact, the silence was deafening. The day was gone, my to-do list had hardly gotten shorter, and the pain and shock of the last few hours had dampened every note in my song.

The following morning, I was back at it. So much to do and I'd lost so much time the day before. As I, once again, began to search for an appropriate playlist, it occurred to me: perhaps my soundtrack was not intended to be the soundtrack I had imagined any more than the time I thought was available to me was really mine. Maybe my music is the tinny giggle of someone I love and the gravelly sound of my own voice sharing my heart. Maybe this was not just a list of songs, one separate from the next; but this was meant to be an entire symphony. Each song, each task, each interaction carefully moving into another, all of them interconnected in some special way. Maybe the dance is not just the way I swing or sway to each song independently; but it is a carefully choreographed ballet, interdependent movement. I waltz from room to room, gathering laundry as I go, and twist from the stove to the fridge as I search for ingredients; I dance a passionate tango, cradling the phone on my shoulder while drying dishes at the sink. Maybe as evening approaches and the house lights dim, the glow from the orchestra pit helps me to see the score more clearly: there is great value in what has come to be over what I had planned. The management has been forced to make a substitution: the Blues have been replaced by laughter and friendship. I haven't lost time and I have spent each moment surrounded by the song of life.

And Jesus, the Author, the Creator, the Director has been there all along; He is the Keeper of time. Through altered plans and unexpected mishaps, through the noise and the silence, He is sovereign. The soundtrack I searched for all those hours before was created in the passage of time: love and laughter, love and pain, love and faithfulness, love and time --its passing and time yet to come. Time will not be "made up for," but it will be altered, transformed from my plans to His, and hopefully, (if I acquiesce) lived well. I will see, one day, how all things worked together for my good. I will stand with the faithful, one day, listening to a sound like the rumble of thunder as song breaks out in heaven. I am assured of this with an assurance that allows me to sit back and rest confidently in God's sovereignty even today. Even when I have trouble keeping time.