Notes from the Heart · October 2026
It’s About Time
I thought about taking the clock off the wall to keep it from hopping off of its own accord. Rumblings and tremors filled the house. Vibrations shook the floor. Dishes rattled in the cupboards. Immediately behind our backyard privacy fence, heavy equipment stirred up dark clouds of dust, scooping heaps of dirt, leveling the ground, spilling rocks in cascading streams, pressing and tamping down wide swaths of soil for the streets to come.
It was only seven in the morning but the rumored subdivision expansion (which I’d hoped might never really happen) was suddenly underway.
Wide-eyed Ginger slunk around, her ears flattened and tail puffed. Hours later the poor skittish kitty emerged from her retreat under the couch, and the slip-sliding clock on the wall grew still once more. The air was strangely quiet, like a subwoofer had been turned off. Golden machinery glinted in the autumn sun just beyond the backyard, parked in neat rows waiting for the commotion to resume the next morning.
We can take the clock off of the wall, and we can change the forward or backward position of its hands to accommodate Daylight Saving Time, but Someone else controls time. The author of time holds each moment—we don’t. And there’s a comfort, I think, in remembering that truth.
It’s fall now. The hours in the day will be no less in the coming winter than in summer, though the moments of daylight are far fewer. Days aren’t shorter really, but daylight is. Even when light lingers late on festive July evenings, when the fragrance of neighboring barbecues floats down the street, mingled with distant laughter and conversation, life is still a vanishing vapor. How do I use my time? And how do I encourage others to use theirs?
“So teach us to number our days so we may apply a heart of wisdom.” God the Father knew our days “when as yet there were none of them.”
I’ve heard time is like a bank account we draw upon daily. But the catch is, none of us knows the balance. I wonder if the proverbial glass sand timer should be opaque, not clear. We don’t know how much sand any of us has left.
I thought of this last Christmas as my husband smiled weakly from the hospital bed. Having a heart attack had not been on his calendar. God “gives us life and breath and all things,” seemed even more meaningful after the stents had been inserted and he was released to go home. Thank you, Lord, for your gracious gift of today!
Even if new rooftops soon block the brilliant setting sun in the wide Montana sky that I have grown fond of watching above the backyard fence, let me be grateful always, Lord, for this moment You give. You are “the Lord and do not change.” You are “the same yesterday, today and forever.” Your word “remains forever settled in the heavens,” even after the last earthly moment melts away.
When the machinery rumbles tomorrow, and I (a little like the frantic maids in Mary Poppins) steady the clock on the wall, let it remind me of truths I seem to need to hear repeatedly. Life is fragile. Handle it carefully. Time is temporary. Invest it wisely. And Almighty, everlasting God is worthy, so worship Him faithfully, while it is called today.
— Alora
Scripture quotes in order: Psalm 90:12, Psalm 139:16, Acts 17:25, Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8 and Psalm 119:89.