Time and Not Time

What day is it?

It's normal over the holidays, but this year it seems exaggerated somehow.  

When normal rhythms are disrupted a day can lose it's 'feel', as is in it doesn't 'feel' like Friday when I get to wake up slow, and settle myself into the family room with a fire on and a cup of tea.  Doesn't feel like Saturday either because Ken is home and not out for his breakfast with 'the guys'.  Doesn't feel like Monday either, because I haven't just had Sunday, and Sunday, normally speaking, is basically the pivot point in every week for me.  I really notice Sundays.

Doesn't feel like the end of Christmas.  Didn't I just put up the decorations?  Didn't I just get out the Christmas CDs?  All the Christmas that happens before Christmas didn't happen for me this year.  Not complaining, not at all.  LOVED where I was instead.  It's just now adding to that sense that time didn't happen in a normal kind of way.

This particular doesn't-feel-like-Friday-or-Saturday-or-Monday-or-the-end-of-Christmas also happens to be the first day of a brand new year.  So there's another question.  What year is it?  And of course I know it's 2016, but somehow it feels like 2015 left in a great big rush, especially the last three months of it, and I'm not sure if I'm quite ready to let it do that.

Haven't fully processed all that happened since September while I was in Thailand.  Don't want to lose the core life lessons any more than I do the newly acquired vocabulary and language skills.

And just now, when I was mapping out the month ahead I did not write down my regular visits to Mom, including the three hour (one way) drive to Peterborough.  This reminds me of two more time related weirdnesses.  One is the delay for me in marking her passing and how even though she left November 19th, only now do I register how my life is different.  The other is accepting the good gift of the redeemed time each month, and considering how to spend it well.

So things linger from last year. 

Not that 2016 isn't welcome.   I LOVE New Years every time.  It is for me another brand new mercy just waiting to reveal itself.  But that it's here so soon?  When did that happen?

And in this not-sure-what-it-feels-like time zone I find myself drawn to the One who lives outside of time anyways.  Like an anchor.  Like a cosmic reference point.

"From everlasting to everlasting, you are God", Moses declares in Psalm 90:2.  And with 40 endless years of desert-wandering leadership as his context, he certainly would understand this time-outside-of-time feeling.  The entire psalm is full of time references, all anchoring back to the God who led him and their people all the way home.  Eventually.

"Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom", he pleads (v 12).  A proper understanding of our mortality is his backdrop, one that helps us arrange and rearrange priorities, set up calendars and goals and life maps and quiet spaces, all so we can exist within this strange element we refer to as Time, but to which God does not answer.

The gentle snowing happening in this right now moment as I write reminds me of another time reference,  Winter.  It's winter now.  And soon enough I will step with eager anticipation into the regular rhythms of my life and the remarkable, humbling thing I get to do with it.  And winter will give way to spring which will give way to fall which will give way to another Christmastime.  In all of that there are challenges ahead, for sure, all of which seem to set themselves up in what was formerly known as 2015, but which I welcome into 2016 with confidence.

Because of the blessing.  Moses' blessing.  And it seems so fitting to begin with this.

May the favour of the LORD our God rest upon us;

establish the work of our hands for us --

yes, establish the work of our hands.

Psalm 90:17

May the work of your hands bring you joy and satisfaction throughout all the moments of this year.
And may they be established, grounded, anchored by the One who is waiting there for you,
Outside of time, but totally ready to engage with you within each day.

Blessings and joy for 2016 everyone.