Teach Us to Number Our Days

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (ESV)

By Amanda Nicol | Ministry Intern serving at Gresham UMC in Gresham, OR

In the past week, I have been thinking a lot on the passage of time. It is a topic that returns to me every year, as the seasons change and my spirit stirs with renewed awareness of the cycle of endings and beginnings that marks the rhythm of life. To the point, this written reflection denotes the beginning of the final quarter of my residency. I find myself, as I get ready in the morning before heading into the church, counting the days lost and the days left. One day less, one day less...the words are part wondering, part lament.

[pull_quote_right]Are you 18-25 and considering a call to ministry? Click here for info about our summer program.[/pull_quote_right]Perhaps this post is premature. After all, I still have three whole months left before I move on to the next stage of this journey. But the impending departure haunts me to a certain extent. I am wishing, with increasing regularity, that I could go back to the beginning. My residency has felt much like my school years used to feel, the tiniest details of the first few months etched into my memory with the distinction of newness and infinite promise. Then, at a point I can never identify, I transition into routine and the days begin to blur together, one indistinguishable from the other. There is not much I would change about this experience, but the sense of regret has begun to seep in that I did not do more to savor this unique opportunity.        

I am not quite twenty-five, but over the past few years I have begun to understand on a visceral level what my parents and grandparents proclaim every birthday and New Year: where has all the time gone? At one point or another I became hypersensitive to that question. I began keeping a gratitude journal where I would record little pleasures like juicy, sweet apple or soft leggings – all out of an attempt to slow time and inhabit my days more fully by focusing less on the doing of life and more on the living. I fell out of the habit of recording those little moments some time ago, instead counting the intervening years between milestones with a perplexing mixture of nostalgia, wonder, and mortal terror. I have not quite figured out how time can have both elastic and fixed properties, or how God operates in the midst of it all.

Just one year ago, I was working a dead-end job that was equal parts mind-numbing and exasperating. The days stuttered and started and dragged. My hour-long morning commute to my job at a law firm in downtown Spokane involved a twenty-minute drive to a park and ride, where I would then catch the north-south commuter bus into town. Many a morning I sat on that bus, staring out the window and despairing over how I had managed to let my life stall so soon out of the starting gate. I felt stuck. Everywhere I looked, it seemed like God was making something new out of everyone except me. I wondered how long He was going to ask me to wait.

[pull_quote_right]God is saying, “Nope, keep moving, we have work to do!”[/pull_quote_right]Now, one full year later, I ironically plead with Him to slow down a little. There has been so much change – most of it good – but there are days I look back over the distance I have covered and catch my breath for the mystery of how and when the Lord decides to move in our lives. Right now, my spirit feels a bit like Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, stunned and terrified and overflowing with the need to parse this time and place, asking God if we might stay here just a bit longer. But God is saying, “Nope, keep moving, we have work to do!”

He’s right. The first quarter of this residency was all about orienting myself to a new place and new possibilities. The second quarter was focused largely on the future as I applied to M.Div programs and pursued certification as a candidate for ordained ministry. But this quarter…this last quarter is going to be about the present. There is good work that remains to be done at Gresham United Methodist Church, conversations to soak up, and relationships to be grateful for. I will try not to let a sense of nostalgia or regret hinder my sense of accomplishment in these remaining months. Instead, teach us to number our days, I’ll pray, so that I might gain a heart of wisdom.

Amanda is a twenty-something Spokane, Washington native recently transplanted to the Portland, Oregon area.  She graduated from the University of Puget Sound in 2012, where she was actively involved in campus ministry.  When she is not reading too many books or watching too much Netflix, she is learning how to let herself be surprised and loved by God as she explores what it means to be called as a Christian in the world today.  She is currently serving as a Ministry Resident at Gresham United Methodist Church in Gresham, Oregon under the mentorship of Dr. Steve Lewis.