The Hourglass

The Hourglass                         9-19-2013

By John W. Vander Velden

 

Have you watched the sand as it slowly slides through an hourglass?  Each grain of sand significant, as it, one by one, flows through the narrow portion that connects the glass that holds the sand above with the part that holds the sand that has fallen.  An hourglass measures the passing of time…a small sliver of eternity.

Perhaps many find the object fascinating because they see more than sand sliding through from one end to the other.  They see themselves!  For the sand that has come to its rest could represent their past.  The Sand waiting to fall, their future.  It is in the narrows…where the grains line up one by one…the now.

Here in the narrows, we look up and see futures possibilities…dreams yet before us.  Below, we see past successes and failures as well. But it is in the now we live and breathe…In the now we must face the challenges, those expected and those unforeseen…In the now we tread forward toward the future and all it holds.  We must not allow ourselves to be stopped up, by the past.  We must not race so headlong toward tomorrow, that we spill our life wistfully on what has not yet arrived.  No, we must live in the narrows.  Each moment a precious gift, moving from the future we do not know, to the past that are our memories.

None know the number of grains that yet wait their turn through the narrows.  Those whose “year count” has grown, understand that the sand above is not infinite.  Yet now is not the time to worry about what could have been.  For as long as the sand flows…as long as each grain comes to the narrows…we have grand opportunities.  Each grain matters…each grain, a story of its own…Life is meant to be lived! 

(312 Words)