The weather was warm and I was alone with the children. So we decided to go for a hike. We walked along a trail that followed the Etowah River. My oldest son is the adventurous type and it did not take very long for him to discover a sand bar that led down to the river. We walked out on the sand and almost by instinct, the shoes came off. The boys ran and put their toes in the water.
In an instant, I was taken back to an earlier time when my grandfather had taken me and my brothers to a creek. We slipped off our shoes, walked through the water and turned over rocks on the hunt for green, slimy lizards. He would sit on the park bench for hours and let us bathe in the summer sun. He had recently been diagnosed with cancer and knew that within a few months his body would be too weak to enjoy life outside of a hospital bed. His prognosis was dark so he wanted to immerse himself in as much light as possible. I will never forget those summers barefoot in the creek.
After a few minutes on the sand bar, I told my sons to find their shoes. We needed to be going. There was an older lady with her granddaughter at the river that day. She told me that they had been there for an hour. I felt like a bad daddy because we were there only a few minutes and I was telling my kids to pack up. For 30 minutes, the grandmother had been saying, “You have five more minutes.”
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“I know we need to be heading back,” the elderly lady told me, “but I cannot bring myself to leave.”
The girl thought that she only had five minutes left to play in the sand.
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“The truth is I get five more minutes to watch her play,” her grandmother told me.
James 4:14 says, “What do you know about tomorrow? How can you be so sure about your life? It is nothing more than mist that appears for only a little while before it disappears.”
When was the last time you took five more minutes?
