‘Time flies’.

‘Where has the time gone?’

‘Blink and you’ll miss it’.

‘They grow up so fast’.

Most of us experience time as something that flows by unexpectedly quickly. Our final reading from Ecclesiastes this week at St. Mark’s asks us to think about our entire lives, what stage we are at, the challenges and opportunities that we face when we are young and when we are old. We realise how short life is—time enough to learn and experience a few things, and then to hand over our lives to God again. In this time, then, Ecclesiastes says, we need to ‘remember our Creator’ and think about the meaning of things. Jesus teaches us that our response to the shortness of life should not be to rush around faster and faster to do everything, but to look for the coming of God’s Kingdom that will bring permanence and eternity into our world. This is a helpful reminder as we approach the ‘silly season’ with all its distractions and cares.

-Andrew-