The empty landscape stretched below me. Time had erased indelible landmarks and nothing remained of lives lived there.
There had been a homestead, grain and vehicle sheds, domestic animal yards and a whole family, living, growing and learning. But now 150 years of family history was reduced to a silent memory in the hands of strangers.
Well, so what? All over the world there are bared bones of families and civilizations that time has erased.
I mourned the passing of my family home yet mansions and castles have been treated just as harshly. Even great cathedrals and temples and churches have been tossed to the elements, silent signposts to relentless time. Their memories and the lives they touched, erased.
It is ironic that one historical family, acclaimed as ancestors by numerous cultures, is noted for losing the family estate it never owned. It never held title deeds or occupied mansions or filled barns with grain. Four generations are named as famous and homeless and after those four died, another 400 years rolled on before the family established its own homes on its own land.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph are the four generations who never owned their land. They looked for a ‘city whose builder and maker is God,’ not man. It is promised to them and to us. When they receive their inheritance we, too, will receive our inheritance.
So hold your dreams. Don’t let the ruins of the past obliterate the hopes of the future. “Listen, my dear friends; has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to possess the kingdom he has promised to those who love him?” James 2:5.
It’s safe for us – God holds the title deeds.
ETERNAL DREAMS
When Time, relentless, marches on
Then Love, relentless, counts the years.
When Time expunges all that’s past,
Then Love reduces scars to tears.
When time, relentless, rips things down
Then Love, relentless, holds them still.
When Time releases every hold
Then Love recaptures every skill.
What Time, relentless, fells, revokes
Then Love, relentless, evokes all.
What Time disposes, dispossesses,
Let Love repose, possess the fall.
As Time returns the dust to dust
Then Love refines Time’s fetid schemes
For Time decays the last decay
But Love redeems eternal dreams.
Elizabeth Price
Team writer with Just a Minute