Do you remember the character Miss Havesham in Dickens’ Great Expectations, who 25 years before had been jilted by the only man she ever loved?  She received a letter from him calling off their wedding twenty minutes before nine while she was putting on her wedding dress.  Something died inside.  She stopped all the clocks at twenty minutes until nine, sealed up every window in the house, and never took off her wedding dress.  There she sat while her world wasted and withered away.

While not so dramatic, I know a lot of people who respond to life that way.  Some unfortunate event -- an illness, a divorce, a death, a job-loss, a painful love affair, being treated unfairly -- reduces us to nothing.  We allow our misfortune to turn us off to life, to immobilize us, to rob us of everything life offers if we would stay open to it.

How is it with you?  Is your life clock stopped?  It’s time to wind it again and let time move on.