Love is Pure Gold, and Time a Thief

 Where has the time gone?  On this blog, at least, the year 2020 fell into a hole and never emerged from it.  And just as well, yes?

Now, though, it is a new year, with hopeful news about crawling out of the hole carved by the COVID-10 Pandemic.  For yours truly, I now have internalized shot 1 of 2 (Pfizer), and am one shot and another 2 weeks away from immunity, whatever that turns out to be.  There is a profound sense of freedom looming just weeks away.

What's more, my wife and I have both selected retirement dates and have informed our employers of the same.  A similarly delightful sense of looming freedom has resulted from that!  Not all the final boxes are yet checked, but we trust that God is in the details, benevolently lining circumstances up to provide a smooth transition.

New life stages are on the way!

As my father-in-law has often said, there are 3 stages to old age:

• the Go-Go 60s
• the Slow-Go 70s
• the No-Go 80s

and we are smack in the middle of Stage 1, ready to Go! Go! Go!  Although as life expectancy lengthens, I think those convenient decade spans may be shifting out about 5 years (or at least I hope so!), such that we can go-go until 75 and slow-go until 85, etc.

Which puts me in mind of a lyric from a fine song by Kurt Weill, Speak Low, which says in part:

I feel wherever I go that tomorrow is near,

Tomorrow is here and always too soon.

Time is so old and love so brief;

Love is pure gold and time a thief.

(I like the Boz Skaggs version, personally)

Time IS a thief.  It steals your looks, your health, your vitality, your mentality, your speed, your resources, your relationships (eventually) ...

and yet, it can give as well as take.  The last 12 months have been a gift of more time at home, and a deepening of relationship.  God bless quarantine!  I have not had to commute up north for almost a year now, and may never have to again.  And if this unexpected time together has deepened and lengthened love on the way toward the threshold of our golden years, then that old thief, Time, has had a change of heart, giving back some of what it has taken.