The Hourglass Soul

Time: a grinding wheel, a vapor, both tortoise and hare. Every aspect of life pillaging fragments small and large. A humbler of both King’s and fools. In our mortal frame, drifting like apparitions upon the sea of memory.

In this construct within which we erect life, decades swirl like hands in a clock tower. Our personal demons devouring the sands of the hourglass. Inexorably, we become warriors, defending the life of the soul from a world that persistently lays siege to hope.

And all this is as it should be. For it is through adversity wisdom ebbs into the soul. In the natural process of growth, expectations are dashed upon the rocks of the puerile. Cautiously, we learn that growth cannot be forced, cannot be taught, it is born of the hourglass.

Unanswered prayer is not the failure of God, but that we cannot make demands, we cannot control everything. Outcomes are slow baking roasts, steeping and soaking in the juices of grace for stupidity, taking years before the flavors mature.

Oh, how entitled is our impatience. Mastery cannot be attained through discipline alone. Our personalities, our habits, our character, our dreams, they must have time enough for lessons to be learned, to make the mistakes we wrest them from.

But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be complete, lacking nothing.

James 1:4