The Closing of the Calendar

So soon the cycle has once more swiftly turned itself, and suddenly we come again to the closing of the calendar. It seems only a few short weeks since we were watching another calendar close, since we were watching another winter, another spring, watching another growing season. Only a few short days, it seems, since summer. And as we face this breathless flight of future days there is a sobering thoughtfulness in realizing that the years are running rapidly a sobering thoughtfulness that suggests we pause to look at what we do with life.

Actually there is no alchemy in the closing of the calendar. The curtain opens next day on about the same scene. The nature of man doesn’t change much over night, and we are not likely to wake up on any morning greatly different from what we were. (Change, for the better at least, is likely to come with quiet resolution and quiet consistency.) But we may well wake up wondering whether we have made the most of the closing period of the past; wondering what we could have done differently; what we might have done that we didn’t do.

This is a time, too, that suggests settlement. The blessed relief of paying a debt is surpassingly satisfying, even as the burden of an unpaid debt is doggedly discouraging. With an unsatisfied obligation we don’t quite own ourselves. We don’t quite own our talents or our time. There is always a claim and encumbrance upon the future when a debt is coming due. But the man who learns to live within his means finds the future ever easier to face.

In addition to debts in matters of money, there are other obligations also: debts of gratitude; debts to parents, to loved ones; debts to others for service receiveddebts for sweet service for which there is no entry on the books. There is the debt of doing our part in life, the debt to Him who gave us the privilege and blessing of life. All these debts are as real as those that are kept in formal accounts.

And there are differences to be settled, as well as debts. If there are those whom we cannot face with good feeling, if there are those near us with whom we cannot feel free because of some unhappy act or utterance, the closing calendar suggests that we do what can and should be done to dissolve unsettled differences.

The sands are running; the hands are turning as time moves on to eternity, and no day, no year, should come to its close without the settling of debts and differences to the best of our ability.