WHO GETS THE SAND
What God quietly gives back after a lifetime of urgency.
This photograph is not about showing my age. It is about the peace I did not always have. Come sit with me for a few minutes. I’d like to share something life taught me.
The sand doesn’t ask permission.
It just falls.
The question was never how much is left.
The question is who gets today’s sand.
DEDICATION
To the Holy Spirit — You have walked beside me through every season, pressure and peace alike, and You are still teaching me what I am finally free to lay down. My times have always been in Your hands.
To the Good Years of Work — thank you for the opportunities, the friendships, and every lesson they taught me. I honor those years with gratitude, but I no longer ask them to define the years God has now given me.
To Marty — my best friend, my encourager, my greatest earthly gift. There is no one I would rather share this life — or eternity — with.
To My Friends — we have shared more than years; we have shared seasons. Thank you for growing older with me.
To My Sister — always a few steps farther down the trail, blazing it with courage, perseverance, faith, and joy. Watching you embrace each season has made it easier to embrace my own.
To the Animals Who Shared My Journey — none of you measured life by how long it lasted, only by the joy of another walk, another game of fetch, another familiar voice, another moment together. Thank you for reminding me that every grain of sand is a gift.
To Jesus — You gave me purpose when I was young, strength when I was burdened, and rest when I was weary. The destination was never measured by the sand remaining, but by the One who has held the hourglass all along.
SCRIPTURE
“My times are in Your hand…” — Psalm 31:15 (NKJV)
“Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth…” — Ecclesiastes 12:1 (NKJV)
THE HOOK
Saturday morning. Breakfast with longtime friends.
Most of us owned businesses once. We built companies. Raised families. Carried responsibility for decades. Tables like this one used to fill up with contracts, employees, deadlines, problems worth solving.
That’s not what we talked about.
We compared knees. Backs. Doctors. Medications. Surgeries. Somebody had advice. Somebody always has advice.
An hour. A full hour on health.
And somewhere in that hour it landed on me, quiet as anything.
I had become the table I used to giggle at.
I laughed first. The reflection came second.
THE STORY
For most of my life, I answered whatever rang.
A pay phone. Then a pager. Then a cell phone. The devices kept changing. The command never did.
Respond.
I spent my working years in high-risk manufacturing. High risk. High consequence. I dreamed about work — not the way men say it, but actually dreamed about it, at night, in my sleep. I never really rested. My identity tied itself to responsibility, one knot at a time.
I retired before my nervous system did.
The plant closed. The alarm inside me took longer.
One morning Marty asked, “What are you doing today?”
“Whatever I want.”
She laughed. Before long, she was giving the same answer.
She’s a free agent. I’m a free man. Not free from purpose — free from false urgency.
And somewhere in there I noticed something I never expected to say about myself:
I don’t make things bigger than they are anymore.
It took a lifetime to earn that sentence. Here’s where some of it started.
The year was 1978. I was about nineteen. A friend brought me to a garage in the Bay Area. Electronic components covered every surface. One of the men there was joyful, funny, a free spirit. His name was Steve Wozniak. The other was quiet, focused, intense. His name was Steve Jobs.
I had no idea I was standing inside a beginning.
Years later, I stood second in line at an Apple Store on a launch morning. Woz walked up behind me — third in line. I gave him my place. Then the man in first gave him his. The free spirit from the garage went to the front of the line, and I ended up third.
We rarely recognize beginnings while we’re standing inside them.
Youth watches the grain fall. Age gets to see where it landed.
THE MOMENT
Jasper is almost twelve now. An Australian Shepherd who has spent his whole life bringing things back to me.
I throw the ball. He returns slower than he used to. Partway back, he stops. Looks toward the house. Looks back at me. You can watch him decide.
One more throw.
He always chooses me. It just takes him a little longer now.
He doesn’t love me less. His body simply asks more of him now.
He no longer chooses the ball.
He chooses me.
THE TURN
Age took away speed. It gave back presence.
Age took away urgency. It gave back peace.
Age took away control. It gave back trust.
But I want to be honest about that trade.
There are moments when life still asks me whether I’m fulfilled. Spiritually, I am. In my marriage, I am. In the things I can still pursue, I am.
But there’s an ache in the things I can no longer do. I’d still like to curl the forty-pound dumbbell. Ride the bicycle. Take the long hike without wondering what my body will say tomorrow.
I don’t think that tension ever gets one final answer. It moves as the season moves.
Maybe fulfillment in this season isn’t having everything I once had. Maybe it’s learning to receive what God has placed in front of me now, without pretending I don’t miss what has changed.
I spent most of my life answering what rang. Now I’m learning to answer what matters.
When I look at younger people now, I don’t feel envy. I feel wonder.
My hope is that they learn how to live. To find joy, happiness, and fulfillment. To build. To risk. To love deeply. To fail. To learn. To experience all of it.
I hope they learn how to contribute — to leave more on the table than they take, to accept what life gives without believing life owes them something, and to come alongside others with compassion.
My prayer is that somewhere along the way, in a quiet moment they cannot manufacture, Jesus taps them on the shoulder and says, “I’m here.”
I pray they recognize the One who has been steadying their course and lighting the trail.
I wish that for the young.
I wish it for everyone.
Because mistakes are inevitable. The difference is often who we are listening to — and whether we recognize the faithful Companion walking beside us when they come.
If we do not consciously choose who will lead our lives, the world gladly will.
Don’t wait for the sand to get low before you ask who’s been holding the glass.
THE DRIFT
Your best sand is already gone.
The hourglass only empties.
Wanting less is wisdom now — expect less, reach for less, matter less.
Just manage what’s left.
It sounds reasonable. But the sand that falls doesn’t vanish. It lands. I’ve seen where a lifetime of it landed — a marriage, a family, a table of old friends, a dog who still chooses me.
The glass isn’t going empty.
The bottom is getting full.
THE REFLECTION
Looking back, I can trace Him through all of it.
He was in that garage in 1978, though I didn’t know to look. He was there through the plant years, the pressure, a lawsuit going on eight years, the pager that made sure work could always find me. He was there when the doors closed. That one wasn’t small — losing the business felt like losing a firstborn.
The business was sixty-three years old when I closed it. Generations of employees moved through that building — my father among them. By the end, many of the people who once filled it had already passed. I wasn’t just closing a plant. I was closing a door behind generations of lives.
Before that door could close, there were contracts to sign, liabilities to settle, regulators and departments to satisfy, and responsibilities that could not simply be left behind. It took years to gather every loose end and tie it into one finished package.
When all of it had finally been handled — every document signed, every responsibility accounted for, every obligation brought to completion — only one thing remained.
The keys.
I drove down to the property carrying a ring with nearly a hundred of them.
The new owner smiled when I placed them in his hand. He had been trying to figure out how to get into places he could not open.
For him, the keys opened the building.
For me, handing them over closed sixty-three years.
Then I drove away.
One thought came to me:
It is finished.
The same words Jesus spoke from the cross.
My finished work could never compare to His. Mine closed a chapter. His completed redemption.
But I knew I had carried this responsibility as far as I was meant to carry it.
The keys were no longer in my hand.
It was finished.
He was there.
I was the last one there, but I was not standing there alone.
Age didn’t save me. Jesus did. Age simply became the quieter classroom where I finally recognized what God had been doing all along.
And here is what He does with the sand that has already fallen.
He doesn’t erase it. He redeems it.
The traumas no longer define me. The bitterness no longer owns me. The failures no longer accuse me. The painful grains are still down there in the glass — I won’t pretend they aren’t. They just don’t tell the story anymore.
Christ does.
Not long ago, we lost Truman. He’s home now — in a box, waiting for his place in our ground. Ashes to ashes. Nothing stops the clock. But what remains when the sand is done falling is everything God did while it fell — the traumas cleansed of their sting, the joys and the blessings anchored where they can’t be taken.
Every grain of sand is a gift. Even the ones that have already fallen.
WALKAWAY LINE
I do not know how much sand remains — but my times are in His hand, and I would not trade the hourglass.
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
Who is getting your sand today?
And if you’re young, with the glass still mostly full — have you chosen who will lead your life while it falls?
MY PRAYER
Heavenly Father,
Thank You for every season You have carried me through — the building years, the carrying years, and these quieter years I never knew to want. Thank You for what You quietly gave back: presence where urgency lived, peace where the alarm used to ring, trust where I once gripped control.
Redeem the grains that have already fallen. You know which ones still carry a sting. Cleanse what needs cleansing, anchor every joy You have given, and let the finished sand tell Your story instead of my regrets.
Teach me to answer what matters. Bless the young ones still standing at the top of the glass — draw them to Jesus early, before the world volunteers to lead them. And when my last grain falls, let me be found faithful with the day You gave me.
My times are in Your hand.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
ABOUT G~
G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.
If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.
G~
Beautiful, Thank you. 🙏 Doc.