'To Dream that the Years Had Not Slipped Away'

Last night I finished "Good Prose" by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd, and started the new biography of Mark Twain by Ron Chernow (2025). Can't guarantee my prose is any better but here I am again. It is a Twain sentence Chernow quoted that has captured me just now. Early in life Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain was a riverboat pilot, and Chernow, in describing how Twain often returned in his heart and mind to this time in his life, wrote, "It was a pilot named Lem Gray who had allowed Twain to steer the ship himself. Lem 'would lie down and sleep, and leave me there to dream that the years had not slipped away...'" Lem "would lie down and sleep, and leave me there to dream that the years had not slipped away..." Words like these give me pause and cause me to stop whatever I'm doing just to let them drift down around me like tree leaves on a late autumn afternoon, swaying as they glide onto the grass where they await the next gust of wind that carries them away again. For some reason reading those words a couple more times touched my heart in the way that reminds me that God is nearby and perhaps has something to say to me. Tears came, as they frequently do without rhyme nor reason necessarily, or at least, rhyme and reason have no immediate association. Is it sadness or regret, sentiment or just the awe experienced in the presence of beauty. Jesus spoke of the wind when he said you could not see the wind but you could see what it did, referring to God, the Holy Spirit. I actually heard a teacher telling this same thing to a young child the other day, and just now I think the Lord might be saying, "You could be more like an autumn leaf allowing My spirit to move you without worrying about where I'm taking you." We all know about how Jesus said in Matthew 6 to "consider the lilies" and not to worry about tomorrow. He has taken us this far, and he will take us the rest of the way, so we can rest. And now I am going to my prayer meeting. Hasta luego.