There are so many balls that I have figuratively dropped these past several weeks, it’s disgusting. I am trying to make up for it or just get over it with not much success.

Here’s to new beginnings, then. My oldest nephew, Nils, married his fiance, Emily, this past Saturday. (Some photos of the wedding are available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/steve_oberg/sets/72157594287976715/) We drove down from the Chicago area to attend the outdoor wedding held on the bank of a local river in the town where I grew up. It was late afternoon, the sun was shining, and the temperature was nice and warm. It was a great experience and we are thrilled for this new beginning for Nils and Emily. We were able to see many friends and acquaintences whom we haven’t seen for quite a while, so that was an added bonus. Just as happened at my niece, Britta’s, wedding a year and a half ago, I had this sense while watching the whole event unfold that I was a modern day Rip Van Winkle who had just woken up out of some sort of dream to find that the whole world had drastically changed while he was asleep. I found it hard to come to terms with the fact that this person whom I have known since birth is now a married man, and that means that I am no longer as young as I once was. My older brothers and sisters are approaching middle age, and so am I. My mother may someday soon become a great-grandmother.

This sense of unreality was compounded by a chance encounter this weekend. I met a former elementary/junior high/high school classmate who was working at the local gas station and whom I hadn’t seen since graduation more than twenty years ago. My, how time changes people! It took me a few minutes to realize who she was. And she didn’t recognize me at first, either, so I introduced myself. In our brief conversation I learned that she has a daughter who is now a junior in high school; that she had been married to a military guy and had lived in such faraway places as Fairbanks, Alaska, and Washington State. How or why did she end up coming back to her hometown, I wondered? I didn’t have a chance to ask.

Time passes by so quickly. I blink, and my own children are no longer babies or toddlers or a young adult but instead are young boys, a little lady, and a high shool aged young man. More and more, I think God is reminding me of what really matters most: relationships. This was recently made even more obvious to me by the sudden death of Steve Irwin, the “Crocodile Hunter,” in a freak accident. Like millions of other people around the world, I did not know this man personally at all yet I felt a sense of real connection with him and his young family through watching his shows on TV. I am sure that Steve Irwin was no saint yet to me, he was a wildlife hero. I admired him for many reasons but especially for his neverending enthusiasm and zest for life, and his championing of wildlife conservation. I mourn him and I have shed tears for his wife and his two little kids who clearly meant the world to him. Call me crazy or overly sentimental or apply some other negative epithet but yes, I cried when I heard the unbelievable news.

I ask you to take time to assess your own life. What motivates you? Where do you put your energies, your hopes and dreams? I hope your focus is not on materialistic things, ambitions, careers, and honors, which are like fool’s gold. Instead, seek after what is true, what is real, what is relational. Seek, and you will find the One who created relationships and who made you for relationship: God.