As I looked at my classmates I struggled to remember the names of people that I spent two years with on an almost daily basis. A few went on to High School with me, but sadly I have lost contact with all 43 who accompanied me on my journey from child-hood to adolescence. I got to wondering what became of them.
The discipline of statistics tells me that almost 60 years after we assembled outside our classroom, 16 of my classmates will have passed into eternity, and in an age when marriage was the norm, 35 of us will have married, with the majority becoming parents, and by now, grandparents. Sadly, 15 of those marriages will have failed, with all the resultant carnage that failed marriages bring. If I were to pass any one of my classmates on the street today, I would fail to recognize them, nor they me, such is the passage of time.
Psalm 90, the only psalm attributed to Moses, has a lot to tell us about time. Every one of us expects to live to a "ripe old age", to enjoy many years of retirement, watch our children grow and mature, and bask in the accomplishments of our grandchildren. However, length of life comes at a great cost....
The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, Yet their boast is only labour and sorrow; For it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knows the power of Your anger? For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath. So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:10-12 NKJV
I recently visited an old friend who is now living in an "assisted care" facility, and I came away from that visit deeply saddened. The evidence of failing powers was all around me, etched on the faces, and in the bearing of men and women but a few years older than myself. It is not without good reason that the ancients used to say, "those whom the gods love, die young". My father used to say, "a man bears the sins of his youth in old bones".
If you could turn back the "hands of time" what would you want to change?
A failed marriage?
Harsh words spoken to a now departed loved one?
A shattered relationship?
A secret un-repented sin, bitter words that led to an estranged family member? We all have regrets, all of us would love to undo things in our past, sadly we cannot.
One of the "keys to the kingdom" is to live beyond our regrets, to live a life not overly given to introspection and condemnation. That saint of old, Paul, who had plenty of reason for regrets, had this to say... Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. Philippians 3:12-15 NKJV
Paul also says, in his letter to the Corinthians, If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJV
That boy in the photograph from 1962 no longer exists. None of the children in that photo exist either... time has inexorably changed us all. None of us has been frozen in time, immutable. Some 15 or so years after that photo was taken, that boy was born again, renewed, and the seeds planted in my soul as a 5year old attending Sunday School blossomed.
Have you trusted God enough to leave the confines of the ordinary, the regrets, the failures, the unfulfilled expectations and be born of the Spirit?
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