"Wait for your Papa"

   Our condo is quiet this morning. For the past 4 mornings, there has been a sense of activity, from the early hour of 7AM well into the evening hours. There have been things to do and places to go and meals to go out to and meals to fix for hungry people. There has been fun and talk and games and even some sleep.

   But, of course, we would not trade it for anything else. It is family, a family that is scattered around the country, and it is a chance to do some things together once again.

   We put our Arkansas family, well most of it anyway, back on the plane for home late yesterday afternoon. Our daughter, the mom, and her two growing up kids.

   And as I walked in the quiet this morning, I thought of the passage of time and how it was manifested to me in these past few days. I read it also in the Psalms this morning and even felt the implication of it as the wind blew around me.

"He remembered that they were but flesh,
a wind that passes and comes not again."
   I see it in the faces of kids who used to be little and are now growing up. Not getting to see them much tends to make the contrast of their sizes more manifest.

   And I see it in my own activities. I see it represented in our lighthouse. No longer is it just a pretty symbol of our Island, it is 104 feet of height and 129 steps to the top. It seems like just yesterday when I would get in that circular stairway and zip to the top without missing a beat. Now it is 21 steps and a needed rest at the next landing.

   But my mind says that I am the same and I can do this just like I used to. My body and lungs, however, do not agree, and they trump.

   And I hear the voice of my daughter at the top of that stairway, "Wait on your Papa, he'll be here in a minute".

   But the view is still magnificent, and I can still enjoy that with my family, this time around anyway.

   And I am grateful to God for the experience and the reminders of life to be lived and enjoyed.