Not Enough Time

She and I bent over, breaking brittle stems of straw flowers and purple statice from her dusty Wyoming garden, mountains towering in the distance. Hands full, Melissa stood, pressed a fist above her hip and arched her back, "There's not enough time...”

A little boy, new to town, visited their Vacation Bible School. He was the kind of boy, she said, who trailed trouble like Pigpen trailed dust. “He and his family were killed in an accident that Sunday. It was Thursday when he trusted Christ,” her voice failed. 

When life swirls and it seems that those things which need to be done won’t, I remember Melissa's dark brown eyes, tears running down her freckled cheeks. "There's just not enough time to reach them all."

May we never lose the urgency of loving and serving, reaching others with the good news of Jesus' substitutionary death, trusting that He will sovereignly direct our steps.

Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!  And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’  I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.” (John 4:34-38)