Everlasting

When I hear the word everlasting, I think about all the things I’m surrounded by that are temporal. As I look around, I realize that all my treasures will someday be gone. So what lasts?

I have been taught and I believe that only one thing lasts – Love. After all, most of us have been exposed to the famous wedding scripture from 1 Corinthians 13: “There are in the end three things that last, Faith, Hope, and Love and the greatest of these is Love.” I embroidered that on a piece of fabric when I was in my teens and it has stuck.

As I age, I become more aware of my own mortality and what really matters. What really matters is our relationships. Our priorities shift as we grow from caring about things to caring more about people. We understand the gift of time and attention. We realize what it means to be truly present to another person.

I was at one of our son’s houses over Thanksgiving and I offered to take my five-year-old grandson on a walk to the playground. He was engrossed in hammering nails into a plank. He said, I don’t want to go to the playground, I just want to spend time with you. So I pulled up a chair and watched him pound nails.

Everlasting is about time, an indefinable amount of time off into the future. It’s something even hard to imagine. All we really have is the present moment but what we do in that moment changes the future. And the love we give in that moment has everlasting consequences. The everlasting gift is another person saying: I just want to spend time with you because our time is finite and the greatest gift we can give.