Sands of Time

What do you do with the sands of time
When they carve out lines around your eyes?
I can close my fist up good and tight
But I can't hold back the sands of time

Night and day
Night and day
You remain
You remain
- You Remain sung by Willie Nelson

My grandfather lived on about 10 acres in a small town 100 miles west of Ft. Worth. I could spend hours in his barn with so many smaller rooms to explore, and the simple act of finding which of the hundreds of small inverted cones in the sandy dirt still had the little bug at the bottom. It was like playing bingo with multiple cards; you could stand where there were many holes close to each other and barely tap on the sides creating a few drops of sand to tumble to the center. If the antlion was still lying just below the surface, it would pop out, unblocking the sand away from the center, pushing it back up the cone, and then fall back into the center in one quick flowing motion. I was too young to remember living in El Paso, but my family can still recall memories of reclaiming the house after sandstorms blew through as if they were still sweeping at that moment. In a world where things are changing faster than we can categorize them, we long to have a place that we can rely on remaining stable and unchanged, but like sand it's hard to hold and harder to control. If we look in the mirror, we know that the person looking back is not the one to ask about holding back time.

My prayer for the congregation?

Dear God, No where do we realize how little control we actually have than when we try to tame time. We try by wearing watches, creating schedules, and marking anniversaries, but we can't push back the seconds when they come tumbling downward into our carefully crafted schedule, and we can't push back the years from changing our carefully crafted lives. We can try to hold on good and tight, but time still escapes and our hand cramps. Let us open our hands to release our grip, freeing our hands to hold another hand, to hammer a nail, to deliver a meal, to open a door, to write a letter, to read a book, to plant a garden, to offer our gifts of thanksgiving. O God, in this world that changes faster than we can blink, you remain steadfast and constant. Amen.