The Preacher’s Wife

Do you ever see a movie and have a few lines from the movie jump out at you? Do you ever have these lines jump out and stick with you
for months, even years?

My brothers and I still know tonnes of lines from Disney’s The Lion King.

I sometimes startle people by randomly reciting the lines in different voices. And yes, I know it’s weird, but—

There is this other movie as well: The Preacher’s Wife. The storyline follows a (you guessed it right—) preacher’s wife, played by Whitney Houston, whose marriage needs urgent intervention. So God sends them an angel, who promptly goes on to fall in love with her and form a dangerously mismatched love triangle (imagine having a celestial crush?)

But, enough of the synopsis.

My point is, there were a few lines from the movie that jumped out at me and stuck with me all these years—

"Christmas is supposed to be the most joyous time of the year. But for us at St Matthew's…"

But again, that is not the point.

The point is, someone told me something the other day that jumped out and stuck with me as well.

They said: sometimes, we bother about having the right time and conditions to do things; to be happy, to meet up with people; to live life. And that right time never comes, and we miss out on what time we do have.

So basically, it’s just a couple more days to the end of 2021, and perhaps there were some things we left undone. Maybe we waited for the right time to start our weight loss plan; perhaps we waited for the right conditions to get more serious with God.

Perhaps we put off telling our family just how much we appreciate them.

And time is a cynical creature. It doesn't stop because you've had a really rough week and need to take several breaks; it doesn't freeze over because you don't have the mental courage to face another Monday.

And it doesn't halt because you have been paralysed by intense trauma.

It just moves along.

So somewhere between recovering from a bad break-up and dealing with a stressful reshuffling at work, and maybe catching malaria (or the omicron variant), and just being lazy for about a week —

Life goes by.

The beautiful thing is that, at whatever point we realise it, we can make a change. We can decide to live our lives more deliberately. To live in the moment and appreciate every blessing.

I've had my fair share of worrying about things I can't change. Making up worst-case scenarios in my head and giving myself a stomach ache over stuff that would probably never happen.

I have had my fair share of allowing fear to paralyse me into sitting quietly, cowering in a corner and doing nothing.

And I’ll tell you for free, it sucks.

So rather than worrying about whether or not next week would be a good time to start whatever plans you have for the new year or agonising over a quiz you have a month away, how about you lived in today?

In this moment?

One of my favourite scriptures is this:

So teach us to number our days, that we might apply our hearts unto wisdom.

— Psalm 90:12

It doubles as a prayer too.

Have a beautiful new year.