From "The Vine"
Welcome to 2009!!! I apologize for the delay in getting out the first Vine to you, but after my return from the Christmas and New Year holidays in Arkansas with my family, I found myself inundated with items which needed my attention and was unable. However, it is a New Year, and things are back on track, thank God.
This New Year has had me pondering "time". Just after my mother passed away a little over a year and a half ago, it seemed quite suddenly that my watch's battery died. The hands simply stopped moving around the minutes and hours. The second hand did not even attempt to skip forward. In that moment, I felt it was so fitting that my time had stopped. In deep sadness and grief, quite honestly, I had wanted my whole world to stop moving forward and thought that it couldn't, shouldn't, wouldn't now that Mom was no longer here on Earth with me. I really had assumed that life had ended, that time had finally run out.
But, as much as I thought that was what was happening and what I wanted, the sun still appeared in the East and descended in the West. The stars still churned above me as seconds passed into minutes into hours into days and nights. Through time, God had a way of keeping me keeping on moving forward on my journey of life even if I thought it shouldn't and had little desire to be present in it. It is as if God was smiling while trying to comfort me, and, like a parent holding a crying child's hand leading him up the sidewalk as the tearful child is completely unaware of the direction he is moving, God was guiding a blind me forward embraced in God's purpose and plan for my life.
Months and months later, I finally replaced the watch's battery and just as soon as I inserted it into that little space in the back, the watch's hands jarred awake and began their track around the face and over the numbers. The wheels were set into motion and the gears began their systematic rhythm. Yes, in some ways while doing that, I felt like time was starting all over again, but today, in this brand new year, in this new number moved forward, I realize that it had never stopped and that although Mom had left, God had never and would never ever leave me stranded alone in a stalled second. The same, of course, is true for you!
