"Today is the day of salvation." 2 Corinthians 6:2.

Nathan Attwood

Pastor, Marianna First United Methodist Church

I recently had the opportunity to go to Kansas City to watch the Chiefs play the Texans at Arrowhead Stadium.  I'm a lifelong Chiefs fan. I moved to the Kansas City area when I was a little boy and immediately adopted the team. Even though I spent my growing up years as a rabid fan in the city in which they played, I never had the opportunity to see them in their home stadium until last week. As you might imagine, it was a real thrill.

 Even though...the Chiefs lost. In embarrassing fashion. And, probably, with a loss that will put the playoffs out of reach. Commentators are widely opining that the Chiefs Mahomes/Reid/Kelce dynastic run is officially over. 

 Perhaps the team will regroup and rebuild and make more runs in the future. Perhaps not. That remains to be seen. Either way, I was a Chiefs fan when we won two games in a season just like I was a Chiefs fan when we lost two games in a season. I'm a lifer.

 My years of cheering poor teams, disappointing teams, underperforming teams gave me perspective. In recent years, my team won nine straight division titles, went to seven straight AFC Championships, played in five Super Bowls in six years and won three of them. None of these accomplishments are normal. I always knew this run would come to an end at some point. Father time is undefeated. This run has always been historic and was always unsustainable. I always knew to enjoy it while it lasted because it would not last forever. 

 My son-in-law came with me to the game. While we were walking back from lunch, about to get ready to go to the stadium, he saw a memory on Facebook of his son, my grandson, two years ago when he was just a baby. The little guy is now three, always on the run and full of precocious things to say. The memory of the boy as a baby made my son-in-law emotional as he thought about the baby version of his baby slipping away into toddlerhood.

 I think every parent knows that feeling. Most parents look back with regret that they failed to treasure the fleeting moments they had with their babies after they have grown up. Any parent of grown children would pay any price to have one day with the little version of their child once again.

And yet, as I told my son-in-law, the small child version of our children we lose as they grow up is a loss that enables us to receive a beautiful gift, the grown up version we have raised. How I would love to have a day with the baby version of my grown child. At the same time, I am extremely blessed to daily interact with the child who I raised who is now an amazing young woman, a colleague in the work we share together, someone who helps me much more than I help her. I wouldn't trade anything for the relationship I have with the grown version of my daughter, which is much more based on mutuality, friendship, respect, and shared admiration, shared values, shared intellect. This relationship, too, will be a version of our relationship that we will one day grieve as we also gain a new season in which we are different versions of ourselves and in which our new relationship yields a different kind of gift. 

I offer these reflections to remind us all of a truth we all profess and we all forget. That truth is to enjoy the gifts of today for today. When we are young, we wish our lives away--we look forward to the day we will get to drive, the day we will get out of the house, the day we will finish college, the day when we will get the job, the day when we will get married, the day when we will have kids, the day when we will pay off the debts, the day when we will retire. And then, we get old and look back to the days when all that happened before and our hearts ache with nostalgia. We look backwards, we look forwards. All the while, life is lived right here, right now.

Once, I had the opportunity to develop a truly unique ministry in a closed down junior high school. The church I served asked me to turn the empty building into a second campus for mission ministry. We renovated the building with volunteer labor. We started a weird contemplative worship service led by college students. We developed an incubator for non-profit organizations. We hosted Tai-Chi and Alcoholics Anonymous and community gatherings and so much more.  

It was an amazing experiment. Many lives were touched. But it did not last. The local college that owned the building was able to leverage the vitality we had created to convince donors to pay for a real renovation of the facilities to turn it into a barely used theater space, sans the ministries we launched there. 

I was often tempted to feel that the work we did was a failure because it did not last. Just recently, someone who now works at the church shared with me a thank-you note she found in the church archives from a person whose life was deeply touched by one of our mission projects. It made me feel like, at least for a time, what we did in that building made a difference that counted for something that outlasted the project itself.

Many years ago I saw Buddhist monks create a mandala at Emory University. A madala is sand art. It's an intricate design made with multiple colors of sand. The madala took days and days to complete, and when it was done, it was a masterpiece. And, as soon as it was complete, the monks dumped the sand. The point of a mandala is a message of impermanence. Treasure the beauty in the moment, for everything is fleeting. My mission campus was a mandala of sorts. Maybe all the ministry I've done in over thirty years of sharing the Gospel has been a series of mandalas--beautiful expressions of the love of God that sometimes persisted and sometimes were unsustained but all bore fruit for Christ in their season.

Everything is fleeting, of course, except God. God is forever. Because of God, everything we have from God we get to keep forever in the life to come. But the gifts that come to us in the here-and-now, though they are constant, are not permanent for the here-and now. This moment, this love, this day, this gift, is all God gives us. We dare not miss it.

Do not wish your life away. Do not pine for yesteryear. God is visiting you with great gifts right now, gifts that won't come around again. Receive them with joy. When they pass, be thankful you had them while you did. Don't let the regret of what has been lost rob you of the awareness of the fresh gift God will give you on that day.