A Time to Be!

I can hear Mom’s voice from the past, “Suzy, it’s time to set the table….It’s time to practice the piano….It’s time to wash your dishes….It’s time to clean your room….It’s time to go to school….And I would say under my breath…”They are your dishes, not mine!”

Then suddenly it was time to say goodbye to Mom. I still miss her, think about her, and she is in my heart. How can that be? Her spirit never dies, but leaves me thinking, ‘It is time to be who I am’.

I heard the phrase, What a Time to be me...” Indeed. What a time to be. Somehow, I have learned that the more I praise God and give Him thanks, the more I revel in the faith that allows me to be me!

When I give thanks for our family – all 30 members. I celebrate the blessings and say, What a Time to Be Me. When I pray with my sisters in Christ, I say, What a Time to Be Me. When I walk under blue skies, I whisper, What a Time to Be Me.

It is not ego-ness, but the giving of praise for happiness for my children and grandchildren. It is with wonder at enjoying the birth and life of each great-grandchild.

And I wonder, if God seeing His First Sunset, thought, What a Time to Be Me? Can you imagine the joy in seeing each child whom He knit together appear? Can you ever imagine the depth of hurt when His creation is hurt, maimed or even aborted in the name of convenience? What a Time to Be Me has a different tone when His creation is misused.

One of the needs we have, after the basic needs, is to be needed, to help others, to share. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ” Acts 20:35 Why? Because, as you praise God for being able to help, you think, What a time to be me!

And who knows but that you have come to your royal position or such a time as this. Esther 4:14b Did Esther ask, “Why me?” Did she moan and groan because of the threats of Haman against her people? Did she approach the King and criticize him for his decree to wipe out the Jewish people?

Like Daniel, who faced death if he couldn’t give King Nebuchadnezzar the interpretation to his dream. He first shared with his friends, asked them to pray, and in a dream he received the answer to the interpretation of the dream. He trusted God. He recognized God’s leading. He didn’t say, it must have been something I ate or dismissed the answer. Then he acted on the answer. Not the next year, or make a study of the situation following the latest problem solving mode. Immediately he acted. Afterwards he praised God. He continued in the King’s Palace – ‘What a Time to Be!”

When I was about ten years old, my teacher said something that I have often thought about. “Now the way you are is what you will be like when you grow up.” I was not happy with the way of ‘being me’. I knew I would have to change, and yet, it was so easy going back to being the me, I had always been. Another pivotal moment – December 31^st – in 1946. I wanted to go party and ‘bring in the New Year’ with friends. I asked her if she was going to stay up. She said yes. “But what are you going to do?” Her answer seemed odd at the time, but the more I think of it, the more I understand. She would watch and pray and read the Bible. Mother was a combination Mary and Martha, choosing ‘the better part‘ of being with Jesus, after the house was clean, and the bread was baked.

A verse that has always intrigued me is found in Ecclesiastes 3:11 – He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

What a Glorious Time to Be Me!