Good-bye 2012

The East Coast is about to ring in 2013. I just got the boys in bed after coming home from a party at a friend's house. I don't know if I'll stay up for the next hour and a half.

2012 was quite a year. There is plenty I'm glad to have behind me. Plenty of struggles, hurts, sorrows, pains, etc. But, of course, there were a lot of great things. I went from being a substitute teacher to having a regular job. We had some good camping trips and a trip to the Boundary Waters. We had some good trips to visit family, including our extended family reunion in Pana, Illinois. My book was published. There's a lot of things I'm sure I'm forgetting.

It was a year of natural disasters, terrible atrocities, wars, the Olympics, an election, and plenty of other news (much of which wasn't really newsworthy). But 2012 is about over, and we are about to commence a new year.

Time is an odd thing. It is strictly dependent for us upon our rotation on our axis and around the sun. Time is completely different everywhere else in the universe. A day on Venus is longer than its year (243 earth days for one Venus day compared to 225 earth days in one year there). On Jupiter a day is less than 10 earth hours. The light we see from the sun is eight minutes old. If we could see what was going on around the nearest star, we'd be looking several years into the past.

It only makes sense that God is outside of time, even if we can't comprehend what that is even like. Time, as Albert Einstein taught us, is relative. It's an odd thing. It's very important, yet means very little.

But it matters how we spend our days, what we do with our time. Each minute is a gift. I too often abuse or waste those gifts. But sometimes, on a rare occasion, I do well with it. I use it to love God, to love my neighbor, to love my self.

I can't change the past. Though I regret some of it, it still remains what it is. But time doesn't have to be wasted completely. I can learn from it. I can strive to do better with it. I can let the tough times or the times of failure be times that I grow from.

As Captain Picard said in Star Trek Generations, "Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived. After all Number One, we're only mortal"

May time be a good companion with you in the years ahead.