Hello!
So glad you’re here for this edition of our weekly Five Minute Friday writing prompt link-up.
If you haven’t participated before, you can learn more about how the link-up works on this page.
Basically we free write for five minutes flat, share our work, then encourage one another by reading other posts and leaving comments.
Sound like fun?
This week’s writing prompt is: NEXT
Setting my timer for five minutes, and . . . GO.
This past week many of us watched as the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris burned. We watched wide-eyed and helpless as the magnificent work of art diminished into ashes.
Many people posted photos of their visit to the famous landmark, sharing words of sadness over its irrevocable damage.
One of my friends posted a photo of her family of five standing in front of Notre Dame. The Instagram caption read, “Our kids were so, so tired and we couldn’t bear another hour of standing in line to take them inside. That was no doubt the right decision for the day but now of course I wish we’d done differently.” Someone left a comment, and my friend replied, “We said we’d go in next time.”
And isn’t that often how it happens?
We assume we’ll have a next time.
We assume we’ll have tomorrow.
Today as I sat down at my computer to work, I got an email that a young friend from church had lost his mom to a heart attack this morning.
Last night they all thought she would have tomorrow.
As much as we like to plan and dream about future, we don’t know what tomorrow will hold.
James 4:13-15 says, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'”
Because we might not have a “next time.”
STOP.
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That’s it for this week! I hope you all have a blessed, reflective Easter weekend.
Join the link-up with your own five minute free write here:
Maybe there’s no next time,
and this is all that’s left.
There is no saving nine-line
and I’ve been cast adrit.
Maybe it’s the final dawn
of flashing bayonets
and maybe I should bet upon
the thought that God forgets.
And maybe in the Garden
He kind of thought the same
that there would come no pardon
for an unremembered Name.
And maybe now I see a reason
for this sad abandoned season.
There’s always one typo…’adrift’, not ‘adrit’.
I’m sorry about the loss of your friend. Situations like that and the destruction of Notre Dame really do bring home the fact that there may not be a next time for something. It’s a goo encouragement to make the most of each moment we have.
I’m really trying to embrace and appreciate every moment I’m given these days. I’ve seen too many examples of what you reminded us of…thinking we have tomorrow and then we don’t. I want to be sure those I love know it and that I use every opportunity I can to be a light in the world! I’m so sorry for your friend’s loss.
I caneagerly look forward to whatever He might have next to me