My grandson Noah called me the morning of my birthday and said, “Hey Grampa, you’re the speed limit!!!” I thought that was pretty funny until one of my coworkers said, “Which speed limit?”
I am exactly one week older than my wife. But while I look years beyond my age, she looks year prior to her age. More than once when my wife and I and two daughters have all been together, a stranger has said something like, “Oh, and these must be your three daughters!”
Several years ago I pulled into the sort-of-fast food place for a breakfast sandwich on my way to work. When I drove up to the window to pay, the young woman mentioned a price that I knew was lower than what it normally should have been. When I mentioned that to her, she said, “Oh…I gave you the senior citizen discount!” With my happy balloon deflated, I just drove off to work.
I have had many wonderful birthdays, but there are two that, for some reason, have been hard-wired into my neurons – the 21st and the 40th. On my 21st birthday (or around my 21st) our very good Army friends (Doc and Lila) took my wife and I out to eat at Three Thieves Restaurant in Colorado Springs. The steak was wonderful (it almost melted in your mouth), and at the end of the meal they surprised us with a birthday cake.
On my 40th birthday all three of my daughters presented me with a peanut butter flavored cake with all 40 candles lit! My wife is a wonderful cook and thought that, because I like peanut butter so much, she would try a peanut butter flavored cake. But for some reason the flavor of peanut butter doesn’t translate too well into a birthday cake. And it was a mad scramble to get all forty candles lit before some melted down to a puddle on the frosting. I think it was after that birthday they just started using the wax candle numbers so that the smoke alarm wouldn’t go off.
Some people are bothered by their 20th birthday (I’m like so old!) or their 30th (I’m like so dead!) or their 40th (I’m like so bald!) or their 50th birthday (I’m like so old, dead, and bald!). Those milestones didn’t bother me. But I honestly can’t believe I’m approaching 60. By the time I retire at 65, cell phones will be the size of a grain of sand and Bret Favre will be the first 50 year old quarterback starting in the NFL!
All seriousness aside, time really does fly by. You turn around and you are graduating from high school. You turn around again and your kids are graduating from high school. And you turn around again and your grandkids are graduating from high school! Peter mentions that “a thousand years is as one day, and one day as a thousand years” (II Peter 3:8). The one day equaling a thousand years certainly seems like that when you are 8 years old and wanting Santa Claus to speed things up a little bit.
But life really is short. Whether we live 20 years or 120 years, it’s a little blip on a scale of an eternity past and an eternity future. Someday (unless the rapture comes first) your body will return to dust. On the old TV sitcom “The Danny Thomas Show,” the son asked his father, “Dad, where do people come from?” Danny Thomas replied, “From dust.” His son followed up, “And where do they go when they die?” “Well,” said Danny, “they return to dust.” His son responded wryly, “Well dad, you better look under your bed, because someone’s either coming or going!”
Maybe you have plans for tomorrow or next week or next month or next year or even for the next decade. But (and I certainly don’t want to sound morbid here)…you don’t have tomorrow! James admonishes us, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a fog that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.” (James 4:13-14).
Perhaps you’ve seen the little video called “The Dash Movie” (www.thedashmovie.com).The decisions we make during the “dash” of our lives (and sometimes it goes by as fast as the 100 meter dash) are important. Because we are “just a fog that appears for awhile” we shouldn’t gamble with tomorrow (http://nothingstoohardforgod.org/).
Dan Vander Ark
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Double Nickles
I just turned 55 in February. I would have been 56 but I was sick a year. (I can still see the twinkle in my dad’s eye when he would use that line).
My grandson Noah called me the morning of my birthday and said, “Hey Grampa, you’re the speed limit!!!” I thought that was pretty funny until one of my coworkers said, “Which speed limit?”
I am exactly one week older than my wife. But while I look years beyond my age, she looks year prior to her age. More than once when my wife and I and two daughters have all been together, a stranger has said something like, “Oh, and these must be your three daughters!”
Several years ago I pulled into the sort-of-fast food place for a breakfast sandwich on my way to work. When I drove up to the window to pay, the young woman mentioned a price that I knew was lower than what it normally should have been. When I mentioned that to her, she said, “Oh…I gave you the senior citizen discount!” With my happy balloon deflated, I just drove off to work.
I have had many wonderful birthdays, but there are two that, for some reason, have been hard-wired into my neurons – the 21st and the 40th. On my 21st birthday (or around my 21st) our very good Army friends (Doc and Lila) took my wife and I out to eat at Three Thieves Restaurant in Colorado Springs. The steak was wonderful (it almost melted in your mouth), and at the end of the meal they surprised us with a birthday cake.
On my 40th birthday all three of my daughters presented me with a peanut butter flavored cake with all 40 candles lit! My wife is a wonderful cook and thought that, because I like peanut butter so much, she would try a peanut butter flavored cake. But for some reason the flavor of peanut butter doesn’t translate too well into a birthday cake. And it was a mad scramble to get all forty candles lit before some melted down to a puddle on the frosting. I think it was after that birthday they just started using the wax candle numbers so that the smoke alarm wouldn’t go off.
Some people are bothered by their 20th birthday (I’m like so old!) or their 30th (I’m like so dead!) or their 40th (I’m like so bald!) or their 50th birthday (I’m like so old, dead, and bald!). Those milestones didn’t bother me. But I honestly can’t believe I’m approaching 60. By the time I retire at 65, cell phones will be the size of a grain of sand and Bret Favre will be the first 50 year old quarterback starting in the NFL!
All seriousness aside, time really does fly by. You turn around and you are graduating from high school. You turn around again and your kids are graduating from high school. And you turn around again and your grandkids are graduating from high school! Peter mentions that “a thousand years is as one day, and one day as a thousand years” (II Peter 3:8). The one day equaling a thousand years certainly seems like that when you are 8 years old and wanting Santa Claus to speed things up a little bit.
But life really is short. Whether we live 20 years or 120 years, it’s a little blip on a scale of an eternity past and an eternity future. Someday (unless the rapture comes first) your body will return to dust. On the old TV sitcom “The Danny Thomas Show,” the son asked his father, “Dad, where do people come from?” Danny Thomas replied, “From dust.” His son followed up, “And where do they go when they die?” “Well,” said Danny, “they return to dust.” His son responded wryly, “Well dad, you better look under your bed, because someone’s either coming or going!”
Maybe you have plans for tomorrow or next week or next month or next year or even for the next decade. But (and I certainly don’t want to sound morbid here)…you don’t have tomorrow! James admonishes us, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a fog that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.” (James 4:13-14).
Perhaps you’ve seen the little video called “The Dash Movie” (www.thedashmovie.com).The decisions we make during the “dash” of our lives (and sometimes it goes by as fast as the 100 meter dash) are important. Because we are “just a fog that appears for awhile” we shouldn’t gamble with tomorrow (http://nothingstoohardforgod.org/).
Dan Vander Ark
My grandson Noah called me the morning of my birthday and said, “Hey Grampa, you’re the speed limit!!!” I thought that was pretty funny until one of my coworkers said, “Which speed limit?”
I am exactly one week older than my wife. But while I look years beyond my age, she looks year prior to her age. More than once when my wife and I and two daughters have all been together, a stranger has said something like, “Oh, and these must be your three daughters!”
Several years ago I pulled into the sort-of-fast food place for a breakfast sandwich on my way to work. When I drove up to the window to pay, the young woman mentioned a price that I knew was lower than what it normally should have been. When I mentioned that to her, she said, “Oh…I gave you the senior citizen discount!” With my happy balloon deflated, I just drove off to work.
I have had many wonderful birthdays, but there are two that, for some reason, have been hard-wired into my neurons – the 21st and the 40th. On my 21st birthday (or around my 21st) our very good Army friends (Doc and Lila) took my wife and I out to eat at Three Thieves Restaurant in Colorado Springs. The steak was wonderful (it almost melted in your mouth), and at the end of the meal they surprised us with a birthday cake.
On my 40th birthday all three of my daughters presented me with a peanut butter flavored cake with all 40 candles lit! My wife is a wonderful cook and thought that, because I like peanut butter so much, she would try a peanut butter flavored cake. But for some reason the flavor of peanut butter doesn’t translate too well into a birthday cake. And it was a mad scramble to get all forty candles lit before some melted down to a puddle on the frosting. I think it was after that birthday they just started using the wax candle numbers so that the smoke alarm wouldn’t go off.
Some people are bothered by their 20th birthday (I’m like so old!) or their 30th (I’m like so dead!) or their 40th (I’m like so bald!) or their 50th birthday (I’m like so old, dead, and bald!). Those milestones didn’t bother me. But I honestly can’t believe I’m approaching 60. By the time I retire at 65, cell phones will be the size of a grain of sand and Bret Favre will be the first 50 year old quarterback starting in the NFL!
All seriousness aside, time really does fly by. You turn around and you are graduating from high school. You turn around again and your kids are graduating from high school. And you turn around again and your grandkids are graduating from high school! Peter mentions that “a thousand years is as one day, and one day as a thousand years” (II Peter 3:8). The one day equaling a thousand years certainly seems like that when you are 8 years old and wanting Santa Claus to speed things up a little bit.
But life really is short. Whether we live 20 years or 120 years, it’s a little blip on a scale of an eternity past and an eternity future. Someday (unless the rapture comes first) your body will return to dust. On the old TV sitcom “The Danny Thomas Show,” the son asked his father, “Dad, where do people come from?” Danny Thomas replied, “From dust.” His son followed up, “And where do they go when they die?” “Well,” said Danny, “they return to dust.” His son responded wryly, “Well dad, you better look under your bed, because someone’s either coming or going!”
Maybe you have plans for tomorrow or next week or next month or next year or even for the next decade. But (and I certainly don’t want to sound morbid here)…you don’t have tomorrow! James admonishes us, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a fog that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.” (James 4:13-14).
Perhaps you’ve seen the little video called “The Dash Movie” (www.thedashmovie.com).The decisions we make during the “dash” of our lives (and sometimes it goes by as fast as the 100 meter dash) are important. Because we are “just a fog that appears for awhile” we shouldn’t gamble with tomorrow (http://nothingstoohardforgod.org/).
Dan Vander Ark
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