For our recent anniversary, Dianne gave me…us one of those magic picture machines, digital photo frames. It is loaded with an array of pictures, snapshots spanning our lives.

Images of our grandparents, parents, our children…and us across the ages and stages of three+ generations of life. Our parents and ourselves as newlyweds, new parents. Our kids from first steps to college bound, all now well into adulthood.

Weddings, graduations, Christmases, vacations, around the houses in which we have lived and the churches we have served. Beloved people and pets no longer with us.

It is a cavalcade of all the now’s of our lives. Special days are intermingled with the gift of ordinary days galore. Looking at pictures of me, I am reminded of how things can be hair today and gone tomorrow. (sorry)

Not quite used to the constant picture show, I catch myself lingering at the magic frame on the kitchen counter to watch the days of our lives.

It is a bittersweet dance between grief and gratitude, sighs and chuckles. But it causes me to want to savor more the shimmery gift of the now’s we have each day.

Last Sunday, Labor Day Weekend, I was the preacher du jour at Canterbury United Methodist Church. There was a fine quality group of people present, reinforced by a select number of online worshippers. The focus was on living, not killing, our time.

I referenced Paul Tillich, a towering 20th century theologian-philosopher, who fled Nazi Germany to teach in America. Biblically grounded, Tillich spoke eloquently of what he called ‘the Eternal Now.’ ‘Eternal’ is not just a hope for a quantity of life beyond this life but also a God given dimension, a quality of life in the present.

Tillich notes how we live between the ‘no longer’ and ‘not yet.’ No sugarcoating it. There are hurts from our past that need the grace of healing, forgiveness, and redeeming for sure. Or, as many of us well know, they will sap our now’s.

Yet to retrieve our good memories is not a live in the past deal. The gift is to move those previous now’s forward to enhance our current precious now’s. Some days, out for my early morning jaunt with Sam, I do little memory trips here and there in my life. They add to, not subtract from the day ahead, often prompting me to do better at paying attention.

So, I will continue to watch the dappled scenes flickering across our magic picture machine…recalling both the complications and joys. I commend to you spending some time with the kaleidoscope of now’s flashing in your memory.

In the meantime, whatever else we do, don’t miss the chance to lean into the now’s now. Before it is too late, we can get to tell, show our love perhaps a bit better than before. To say/show our thank you’s, I’m sorry’s, forgive me’s…

What’s more, a la Tillich, we can prepare a bit better for the ‘not yet’ now’s coming tomorrow.