For forever

This morning on Bellshill Salvation Army’s social media sites, we shared a beautiful cornet and euphonium duet called ‘Time and Eternity’. This duet by Alex Ramsay and Chris Shanks, very quickly became a firm favourite with Alex, Chris and the band.

It was therefore my privilege today to prepare some thoughts to share along with the video.

So here’s what I shared.

How does it feel when with someone and there’s a few seconds silence where neither of you say anything? I guess it depends how well you know the other person, as if you know the person well, those few seconds will have felt like just a few seconds. But if you don’t know the person well, tose few seconds will have felt like minutes.

Time is one of those strange things that although every second passes the same for each of us, one person may feel time has stood still while another may feel as if it’s passing extra quickly.

Here’s a quote I came across from Henry Van Dyke which illustrates this:

“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.”

Henry Van Dyke

Here’s a verse from Ecclesiastes 3:11

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

I’m sure we’ve all heard people say things such as:

• You’ll be my friend forever
• I’ll be eternally grateful if you could…
• I’ll remember what you’ve done forever
• I’ll always be there for you

I’m sure when those words are said, the person saying them has meant them. In reality though, we’re all human, so after a period of time we often don’t even remember making those promises, and therefore we break them.

I’m sure we’ve also all had someone say to us that they know exactly how we feel, when we’re going though a tough time. But is it really possible for another person to truly know exactly how we feel? I don’t know what your circumstances are at present, but here’s some words someone once said to me when I was going through a difficult time – “If you’re going through a tough or difficult time, don’t stop, just keep going”.

Tough times are temporary so no matter how difficult we may be finding life, we must always keep going. Remember, God put us on this earth for a reason. He planned out our life before we were born. And he knows what or how we’re feeling or thinking, even before we know ourselves.

“Sometimes it takes a brush with eternity – a crash, an illness, some shock to the system – to get you really thinking about what you want to do with your limited time here, and why you’re living on this wobbling dirt cloud in the first place.”

Hampton Sides

Our time on this earth may be limited, but as God has planned our life out for us, we just need to follow his direction and he will stay by our side both in this life, and for eternity.

For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan from before the beginning of time–to show us his grace through Christ Jesus.

2 Timothy 1:9

While we can’t always rely on others keeping promises to be there for us, or remember us forever, God will. God’s love for us will stand the test of time and His love will last for time and eternity, all we need to do is trust Him.

If you want to see the powerpoint with the duet, you’ll need to head to the band’s Facebook page. But for now here’s the audio recording of Alex and Chris playing this beautiful piece of music with BSAB.