Two grandfather clocks stood side by side, polished wood grain gleaming in the dim light. They were beautifully ornate without being gaudy. It was obvious much care had been taken to keep them in good working order.

Their pendulums swinging in perfect synchronization created volume louder than normal as they chimed in harmony. Then suddenly, one stopped ticking, it’s pendulum coming to an abrupt halt, hanging motionless from the clock face.

In my dream I panicked. Terror ripping through me in disbelief. The sight and sound of the silent clock, sent waves of shock and sorrow deep into my soul. This couldn’t be happening! It can’t be real! But it was. It is.

God ordained for man and woman to become one in marriage. It doesn’t happen all at once but with the slow steady pattern of learning one another over many years. A rhythm develops, a synchronized ticking of two hearts, minds and souls. At some point you know each other so well, in many ways, you become one another. 

When one clock stops, the loss of rhythm, identity and certainty is large. There’s no desire at first to continue keeping time on your own. Time becomes irrelevant, a matter of annoyance. Caught in this moment between the past and the future, you’re now faced with the great challenge of learning how to keep going on alone, resetting the clock to a solitary rhythm. 

Ironically time is the healer of this unsettling dilemma and though there’s no end to missing the heart that beat with our own, I’m told eventually there will be release from this purgatory of in-betweenness. It can neither come fast enough or be hurried. I must be patient, let the process play out. Once again time is the Master and I am subject to it’s whims. 

But Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells me God has written eternity on the human heart; that there is more than what I feel, more than what I see. Believing there is satisfaction above what this transient world provides, is comforting.

I’m thankful for the knowledge that God, who created time, also lives outside of it. My husband ticks on in eternity away from the time limitations of this earth. He’s already knows what I have yet to experience.

“Brothers and sisters, we want you to know about people who have died so that you won’t mourn like others who don’t have any hope. Since we believe that Jesus died and rose, so we also believe that God will bring with Him those who have died in Jesus,” 1Thessalonians 4:13-14.

The day will come when time no longer holds us in it’s greedy grasp. Such a wonderful hope in the depths of great sorrow.

“..and the two shall become one flesh So they are no longer two but one flesh,” Mark 10:8.

“He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end,” Ecclesiastes 3:11.