The land time forgot...

In memory of Dean Probst who has crossed over the River Jordan and is now resting in the arms of Jesus with all the time in the world...


I wake up in my sister’s old bedroom and look out the window. Spanish moss, hanging on the old water oak trees, drifts in the morning breeze. The single pane windows look out on a view that has changed some, but not much. There are a few new neighbors across the road but the landscape of longleaf pines and hayfields remains familiar. The early morning sun lights up the front yard pine trees with a golden glow and the hayfield across the road is white with frost. The big green mailbox still stands guard at the gate as it always has.

Cotton has returned to its place as King replacing the now defunct tobacco farm. Farmers here had such a bountiful peanut crop last year that the surplus will carry over until 2014. Cotton farmers will plant two years of cotton and one year of peanuts on the same field. Cotton depletes the soil and peanuts, a root crop, builds it back up. Here in South Georgia, farming is still a viable occupation for those who love the work and the life. It never hurts though, to have a side job just in case. On the surface, it seems as if time stands still here. And yet...

Mama asked me the other day if I ever imagined what my sister would have looked like if she had lived. The image I hold in my heart is the young, ageless Gayle, dressed in sixties style with her life waiting for her in the wings. I imagined her face changing through the years, aging with wrinkles and grey hair, tart tongue still in place, and I wept for the loss of those years. Time does indeed march on with or without us. And that is as it should be.

Time does not stand still for the people of God in the Bible. They begin as nomads, fugitives living in tents, wandering the wilderness, waiting on a promised land that is not handed to them on a silver platter. They are given new laws to live by, new social structure when they are divided into tribes, one God to replace many gods. When Jesus comes many generations later, these same people are living in their land ruled by outlanders. Life is very different from their beginnings. No longer nomads, the center of their world is Jerusalem and a temple that houses all that is holy for them. Jesus brings a new vision, new tents, a new journey and the people of God continue to live in the package of time they are given with the gift of life.

To everything, there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven... This passage from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes is one of my favorites. I have danced these words in worship and my body memory lets me dance it again when I close my eyes. A time to be born and a time to die... A time to hold on and a time to cast away... Between our birth and our death, as we travel through our allotted measure of time, wisdom can come and be our guide as we choose what to hold close and what to cast away.

This Thanksgiving season, I choose to be grateful for my beginnings here in South Georgia. Born and raised in the rural south, I carry with me the memories of all in my family who were born in a different season with another purpose under heaven. And as time changes the landscape of my soul, I choose to be grateful not only for where I come from but I celebrate where I am going, the new promised lands waiting over the river. Dear One, you are both my still, safe haven and my pillar of fire that leads me into new lands. Guide my feet as I walk this pilgrim way and when my time here is done, gather me up in your Love so that I might rest my weary soul in thee...home at last in a place where time does stand still and love never ends. Amen.