By Steve Wickham
Having made the choice to attend a work function and miss spending time with my five-year-old son it was easy to reconcile the matter - there are plenty of those times.
Trouble is, there are not plenty of those times. He is already five years old. In a reflective moment we're given to the sadness that he is no longer two or three, or even a baby.
We miss far too much of our kids' lives because of work or leisure or sport or habit or else.
Of course, from a Jesus follower's perspective, we know life is much more than our kids. But from the same Jesus perspective He has given us our lives, our kids, and our time. Why would we waste any of it?
I only had five minutes with my son. I videoed him for 90-seconds of this period. It is a snapshot that will become a valuable memory. And even though there was only 300-seconds of contact in play this particular day, I'm motivated to make the most of our play tomorrow.
Even as I write I hear muttering and murmuring from his bedroom, which reminds me he is in deep sleep. Not too many of these sleeps away, just a few thousand, he will be sleeping away from us. Now is the time he will kick the football with his father. At some point he may lose interest.
Now's the time.
Precious moments missed are lost forever, and we will grieve them now or in the future. If now, we make the most of the next moments and those to come. If in the future our grief is bent toward a regret we can only reconcile as something we cannot fix.
Now is the time to do what we can put off. Putting off what we can do now may mean we never do what only now we can.
In the average life, we're given so many precious moments that we take them for granted only to regret it.
Steve Wickham holds Degrees in Science, Divinity, and Counselling. Steve writes at: http://epitemnein-epitomic.blogspot.com.au/ and http://tribework.blogspot.com.au/