Time in a Bottle

“If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do is to save every day ‘til eternity passes away just to spend them with you…”

Timeless words, right? Ten years before I got married, I listened to that popular Jim Croce song on the radio while studying in my college dorm room. In 1972 the lyrics to Time in a Bottle were poignant, but at the time I had no idea how prophetic they would be in years to come.

Milestone moments in my life would accentuate the speed at which life goes by. Graduating from college, being called to my first congregation, getting married, having children, buying my first home, publishing my first book, burying my parents, becoming a grandparent. All these were sobering reminders of the speed at which life goes by. How I wanted to capture these never-to-be-repeated moments in a glass time capsule.

Speaking of time in a bottle. This weekend my firstborn daughter is getting married for the first time. The venue where the ceremony will take place is a glass and time museum in suburban Chicago. How ironic. The setting where a thousand timepieces are surrounded by dozens of antique stained-glass windows reminds me of that Jim Croce song. I can’t think of a more appropriate place to try and bottle a moment in time where my daughter and her husband will promise a lifetime of love.  

But the truth is, we can’t save time in a bottle. It slips through our fingers like melting snow. Or think of another “glass and time” visual. I’m thinking of an old-fashioned hourglass that pictures the passing of time in a relentless sort of way. Remember Days of Our Lives?  In the words from that vintage soap opera we are reminded of a never-to-be-forgotten truth: “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.” We watch the top half of the hourglass become more and more empty and there isn’t anything we can do to slow the process, let alone stop it. Days pass. Moments flee. Time flies.

As I anticipate Kristin’s special day this weekend, I am mindful of what a friend once told me when I first became a parent. “Don’t blink!” he said. “You’ll be sorry if you do!” But I forgot. I blinked!

The first day Kristin went to preschool was a memorable one. The photo my wife took of me with our daughter captured the emotion of a day I’ll never forget. But I blinked. Sending my little girl off to camp for the first time was bittersweet. We missed her more than she missed us. I also blinked. The day she got her driver’s license was monumental. We celebrated as a family. But again, I blinked. Her first high school dance found me snapping photos of my beautiful daughter. But as I snapped, I blinked once more.

Before I knew it Wendy and I were driving to a college three hours from where we lived to deposit Kristin in her freshman dorm. “Where had the time years gone?” I asked myself as I blinked away tears driving the three hours home.

And now my baby is becoming a bride. It’s all so surreal. The past forty-two years of her life have been captured in family photo albums and home videos and countless memories that line the walls in the hallways of my mind. But those images are all ablur. Rewinding the past always seems to take place in fast-forward speed.

In Psalm 90 the Hebrew prophet Moses reflects on the fleeting nature of time. It is in that timeless poem where he asks the Lord on our behalf, “Teach us to number our days that we might gain a heart of wisdom.” In other words, we need Divine help to savor the moments of each new day in order not to waste them or take them for granted. Numbering our days is about as close as we can come to bottling time. And as Moses indicates, we need to be taught how to do that.

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