Personal Blogs

"But I am alive, bearing witness to the beauty of this evening, 

to my own fragile existence within it. 

And perhaps that’s all I can do—to walk gently away from  this good night,

with reverence for the delicate weaving of days that form the fabric of a life well-lived."

Image by https://unsplash.com/@krisijanis

My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. Job 7:6, BSB.

As I sit on the beach, watching the sun sink low over the horizon at Milarrochy Bay on the banks of Loch Lomond. I can’t help but feel the quiet ache that accompanies such beauty. It’s the kind of ache that speaks in whispers, a bittersweet voice that reminds me how fleeting everything is; the day, the night, life.

 The warm colours streaking the sky—burnt orange, deep lavender, soft pink—hold a kind of dignity in their transience, as if they’re saying goodbye while also offering one last gift. There’s something melancholic in the way the light fades, giving way to night, each day marking the relentless passage of time. I cant help but be reminded that it is the Creator's way of asking us to reflect on what we are doing with life.

I often think about Job’s lament, “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle.” His words resonate more deeply as I grow older, as though he’s describing not only his own life but the quiet dread we all feel as time slips away faster than we can grasp. I imagine the weaver’s shuttle moving back and forth, each swift motion a day in my life, threading together a fabric of moments that I can only half remember. I blink, and a week is gone, blink again, and a year. The days string together so quickly that I’m left wondering if I truly inhabit each one or simply brush past it, distracted by all the demands and routines that have accumulated over the years.

This feeling—this existential ache—wasn’t always with me. In my younger days, time felt expansive, as if I could luxuriate in it, waste it even, with no fear of loss. In former days, time  stretched before me like a Highland landscape. But now, as each day is drawn through the loom, it feels as though my moments have grown shorter, tighter, more urgent. My calendar fills up; my children are adults; my parents are long gone; my friends and I find ourselves gathering less frequently, all scattered by the demands of life and the quiet surrender to routines that we didn’t choose but somehow accepted along the way.

Evenings like this, as the sun descends, confront me with the reality of my own finitude. I know, intellectually, that time’s passing is inevitable, a fact that no one can escape. Yet there’s a difference between knowing this and feeling it. When I was younger, the sun setting was just a part of the natural rhythm. Now, it’s a reminder that I’m further along the road.

What lies behind me is fixed, unchangeable, and what lies ahead feels like a dwindling reserve of days that I’m desperate not to squander.

It’s odd, though, how this awareness brings a strange, unexpected sweetness to my days. There’s a richness in seeing things as they are, in acknowledging that I won’t be here forever, —at least not for now. And perhaps, in these fleeting, golden moments, there’s an invitation—a call to slow down, to savour the colours before they’re swallowed by darkness, to live not with the naïve presumption that tomorrow is guaranteed, but with the humble gratitude that today is a gift.

In the end, maybe it’s enough to simply be present, to stand in awe of the sunset, feeling that melancholy pang as the light fades, as the shuttle slips through one more time. But I am alive, bearing witness to the beauty of this evening, to my own fragile existence within it. And perhaps that’s all I can do—to walk gently away from  this good night, not with despair, but with reverence for the delicate weaving of days that form the fabric of a life well-lived.

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