Time Is Fleeting

There have been a few class reunions recently. I saw some group pictures of a class I taught in 1971 when they were seventh graders. It was the year I began my teaching career. They graduated in 1977. That seems so long ago, but actually if my math is correct this group has only been out of high school 41 years. That class was so much fun, and a good one for a 22 year old who didn’t know much about teaching. As I approach my 70th birthday and think about how it seems like only yesterday that I nervously stood in front of my first class I understand what James meant when he asked the question, “What is your life?” Not many of us like his answer, but how true it is. He immediately answered his question. “You are but a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”

The older we get the more we feel like a mist, a breath, a puff of air, quickly appearing then disappearing. I was born in 1948. My future was just beginning. In that year there were people all over the world who were 70 years old, basically my age now. These people were born in 1878. As I was beginning my future they had lived through 70 years of history. Rutherford B. Hayes was the president, the 19th president. They had lived through the Spanish American War, World War I and World War II. When I was born World War II was only three years in the books. People born 70 years before me saw the inventions of the airplane and the automobile. Young men were starting to hone their skills to play in the newly formed professional baseball leagues which had begun around 1870. Some of the newest inventions in the 1870’s and 1880’s were barbed wire, Levi Jeans, the light bulb, Coca Cola, the ballpoint pen, cotton candy and the radio in 1893.

It won’t be long before babies born this year, while I am 70, will themselves be 70 years old. Their future is beginning. My history is much, much longer than my future. Some of the weird ones when they become 70  will wonder, “Where have the years gone?” There may even be one or two who look back 140 years to 1948, consider all that has happened in what has become to them fleeting moments and conclude that James was right, “I am but a mist.” My prayer for all babies and children today is that by the time they reach 70 they will have lived honorable, wholesome lives, and that they will be ready to meet Jesus when the mist disappears.