Paying Attention

To be young, as I remember it, is to be invincible.  Life seems full of so many years that they will never end.  To be young is to believe there will always be another year, another day, maybe, even another hour.  What is not finished today can be finished tomorrow.   My journey from the pulpit to the farm ten years ago brought me to a place filled with a startling revelation.  What the Word says about our days is true.  They are numbered.  They do have an end.  And, instead of thinking invincible, fragile seems the more appropriate word. 

In those days of beginning here at the farm a word came to me as clearly as if I had read it in and book and it came with such authority that it had the smoke and fire authority of a divine word. "Pay attention," was the word.  With the awareness that there was more behind than ahead came this word calling for nothing to pass by unnoticed.  If something passed by unnoticed, it might not come again as the sunrises were short and the days not so long. 

It was not just about one thing that this word from deep within came, but instead, it was a call to pay attention to everything.  Pay attention to every sunset.  Pay attention to every moment within every relationship.  Pay attention to the smells that come across the land.  Pay attention to every living creature who shares the space of the earth.  Pay attention to the dirt, to the broken and rotting limbs.  Pay attention to the creation for within it comes revelations filled with evidences of the Holy One.  Pay attention to the life that is unfolding.  Pay attention to every day, every hour, and every moment.  Pay attention to every single gift given by the Creator for each one is precious as it comes to grace the fragile life once so taken for granted.