The best things in life seem to be transient. . .

Why is it that the best things in life seem to come and go so quickly?  

I love spring flowers and budding trees!  But the beauty of them, striking as it is, lasts such a short time.  I want it to stay!  I want to see those flowers and smell that floral perfume drifting through the air every day. But we blink and it is gone for another season.  It rains and the water pulls the buds off and they lay on the grass until the mower comes out and whirrs them away.

Look at my lilac tree:

I wait all year to enjoy this sight!  Isn't it gorgeous??  

By next week it will be just a memory.

But it gives me hope in the middle of winter when I look out my back door and I see it's skeleton. . . I know it will bloom again and give a wonderful fragrance.  I know I will see it once more I simply have to be patient and wait for it. And when it's here and in full bloom, I need to take time to enjoy it fully, savoring every beautiful image of it that my eyes can behold, and I try to imprint it on memory-- the color, the smell, the height, the fullness.  This picture just doesn't do it justice!!

Sometimes it seems like that with our "experience" with God, doesn't it?  We cannot call an experience into being anytime we want to. . . it is Christ coming to us and he comes when he comes.  We cannot will it to happen- the noticing of his presence that is- though we know that he is ALWAYS present.  His presence seems transient, like a sweet smell that passes by our nostrils and then is gone when we try to identify it or locate its origin.  It is fleeting. . . mysterious. . . elusive.  

So what do we do with these transient moments of bliss?  I say we savor them; enjoy them when they present themselves; take stock of the goodness that is offered to us in the moment and try our best to imprint the impression on our memories.  Maybe the best things in life come and go but maybe that's so we appreciate them while they last and resist the urge to take them for granted.