Look at the Calendar

Every year, either in late December or very early January, I open EXCEL and call up my calendar template.  It’s one that I downloaded years ago that will create a 12 month calendar on a single sheet of paper for any year.  For example, I know that July 4, 1776 was on a Saturday.  One used to be able to determine particular days of the week by use of a perpetual calendar that consisted of tables where you would look up a certain date on a table to find the day of the week.  Now, all you have to do is enter the year and the spreadsheet automatically calculates an entire year calendar in about 1 gillionth of a second.

I’ve been creating these calendars, in one form or another, to hang up at my home office (and sometimes at my work office) for about as many years as I’ve had EXCEL (20 or more).  I’ve known how to work spreadsheets since before that, and learned on the old “SMART” system of word processing, spreadsheet, and database.  That system is, I think, still available, by the way.

Oh, back to the calendar!  Just as I have for many years, when January 1 rolled around this year, I created yet another calendar and taped it to the storage area above my home desk.  I didn’t think much of it then, but as I sit here now looking at it, I am reminded of times long ago when I wondered what the year 2000 would be like, and couldn’t fathom the year 2016.  I was just a boy then back in the ‘50s and early ‘60s, and dreams of futuristic space travel, time travel, personal aircraft, and meals in a pill were all the rage.

As I look back on those years, and compare what I was thinking might be with how it really is, I see that some things came true, some are nowhere to be found, and other things exist now that weren’t even conceived of back then.  Some things have stayed relatively constant over the years.  Other things have taken quantum leaps in technology.

I look at the calendar for 2016 and can hardly believe that I am really here.  It seems so far removed from 1958,, yet there is something there that ties the two together in a way that is indescribable.  For that matter, the year 2000 seems to be far, far away.

I know that I have at most about 18 to 20 years left, assuming good health and lack of stupid accidents.  I don’t yet know if I’ll have dementia or not.  I don’t yet know if I’ll have a heart attack or not.  Shoot, I don’t yet know if I’ll survive this day or not!

We live in so much uncertainty regarding the future that it’s a wonder that we can function at all.  We think we know what we’re going to do today and how we’re going to be able to retire tomorrow, and when we will see our grandkids next, but do we really know that stuff?  Or are we just making plans, hoping for the best?  Just as I couldn’t fathom the year 2016 back in 1958, even so I can not fathom what the next hours or days will bring.  At some point, I must rely on something bigger than I am to keep me on an even keel and not go nuts with worry, questions, and doubt.  At some point, I must find something solid I can hang my hat upon, and trust it to carry me through what I don’t know and can’t know.

I know that something should be the God of heaven and earth.  But is it?  Is it really?  Do I really put my trust and faith in Him, or do I put it in medications to control blood pressure, the fact that I was able to get out of bed this morning and carry out my usual routine, annual doctor visits, my inability to see day-to-day changes in the mirror, and an attitude of benign denial that time is moving ever so quickly to the end of that 18 to 20 years?  Where do I really put my trust as I look again at the 2016 calendar hanging on my desk?