i accidentally came upon a new years resolution for myself this year. every year around new years, my family gets together and does “predictions.” we sit around and write down what we think will happen in our lives, our friends’ lives, who will get married..earthquakes, new cars, if the cat will die or not, etc..
this year, i had a particularly hard time writing predictions. i felt like my predictions for 2013 were quite boring, in fact. i had some ideas of what i wished i could predict, but nothing that i felt confident enough to write down. like it wouldn’t actually happen.
..particularly in my own life, ’cause i’m self-centered that way. it’s not often that you take time to really think ahead about the future, and try to realistically evaluate what you’re doing and what will most likely happen in the coming future.
so it made me think. what do i want to do? what shall i explore? there is a blank slate ahead that we walk into each day.
it’s intimidating, no doubt, realizing time never pauses. when i took that time to reflect and predict the future, it was a shocking reminder how sealed the past already is. we can never change a moment once it’s passed, only the moments to come.
it brings to mind our Creator, who placed us each in our own hourglass. in some pristine and unknown moment, our last sand will slip though space, and we will fall into a collection of our past, and rest.
i can’t say what the future holds when my hourglass is still, but i do feel a tinge of terror at the thought. i imagine the creator picking up my tiny hourglass, looking deeply into each granular rock of my existence. he would know the origin, purity or lack thereof, of each rock, and contemplate the entirety of my life, quietly contained in his hands.
his power beyond imagination, holding my soul softly. why does he take such care with a collection of dust? why does he gaze with such warmth?
marika magazine 