Will you have time?

I share this every year because sometimes you need the reminder to TAKE THE TIME!!

She had the house, the finest car, and the custom-made clothes. She was top of her graduating class and her business was booming. She vowed to never go back to the place she was raised because it had nothing for her. Sure, she sent money home to her parents, but all the siblings had to know it. Sure, she made the occasional calls to brag, never to ask about them. When her mom got sick, she sent flowers. When her sister was losing her house, she sent a check with conditions. She never made time for anybody or anything unless it benefited her, even God. Yes, she joined a church, but not to serve, she liked the honorable mentions of being the biggest tithe payer.

Then a stroke knocked and it crippled her. The people at the church didn’t show up and neither did her employees, but her family did. The same parents she hollered at whenever they asked her to come home. The same brother she “didn’t fool with” because of prior drug use. The sister she called a slut for having two babies out of wedlock. They were there wiping the mouth that had been so foul and helping her learn to walk again even though she used to walk all over them. They even helped with speech therapy, although she never had anything good to say.

One night as she lay in the bedroom she grew up in, trying to find the strength to make her left arm move, she cried. Not because of the stroke but because of the space she’d allowed to grow between her and her family. She wanted to hug them but it was hard to do now. So she cried, realizing the money she made didn’t mean anything because all they wanted was her. She cried because the bragging she did couldn’t bless her, the hating couldn’t heal her and the fancy stuff couldn’t free her. And now, the bible she never read lay stretched open on her nightstand, and the God she’d forsaken, she now prayed to. Thanking Him for the chance to make things right.

See, sis had time because this story isn’t real but what about you? Do you have the time to forgive, forget and make things right before your clock runs out? Will you have the time to say, “I forgive me,” “I forgive you,” “I love you,” “I’m sorry,” or will your ego keep you from evolving and your pride hinders you from offering peace? Will you have the time before 2021 closes? Will you have the time to make it right before you’re holding a body that can’t speak back or weeping at a casket that’ll soon close?

“Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” – James 4:14