May 15, 2015
Looking Ahead
As
genetics go, it’s possible that I have another 20 years left in this earthly body.
In our retirement years it might be interesting if we were to ask ourselves
that familiar question we heard when we graduated from high school, “So, what
are you going to do with the rest of your life?” Many of us don’t have future plans
in the forefront of our mind and rather than being in the race we’re sitting on
a cushion in the bleachers. Paul said, “Brothers, I do not consider myself yet
to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and
straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to
win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14
NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Each of our lives develops into what it is through multitudes of events and circumstances. They leave only traces upon our physical existences, dents and scratches on the car, patches on the britches, scars, etc., besides the good things, like the company of a beautiful wife who came to be in my life because one day I took the courage to say “Hi.” It is our minds that are even more made of the events and circumstances of our past, like the old adage goes, “You are the sum of what has happened to you.”
-----But that’s like saying your car is made of tin, cast iron, and plastic. It’s a completely true statement. However, if I buy a truckload of tin and cast iron and three buckets of plastic I won’t have a car. The events and circumstances of the past are merely the raw materials of which your life is made. Like the metal and plastic must go through a production process to become a car, your responses shape past events and circumstances into you. So, we are each the product of what has happened to us and how we’ve responded to it.
-----The past is no longer here, unless you wish to retain your current shape. And the future? What is that? We are assured by God there is one. But what will it be? We project assumptions onto this concept of “later” and call that “the future”. We get cocky because most of us do so well in projecting correctly. Like, I got up this morning and drove to work under the assumption the Yellowstone caldera would not burst open and obliterate life from East California to West Pennsylvania. So far, I am right. But the future is not our assumptions. It is what is going to be. My brother, in assuming a good time coming at a New Year’s Eve party, died in the middle of an intersection on the way there. The future is sometimes like that. Minor modifications to former assumptions.
-----This course of things we call life flows into what we are through a past no longer there on its way to a future we certainly can not describe. Those of us who know the Lord can define our futures very accurately: an uncertain spell of difficulties and joys ending at the beginning of exquisite joy for completely ever thereafter. Sorry, the details are yet vague.
-----And I made the mistake of growing up thinking I needed to know well the details of the future in order to escape its sorrows and tragedies. Not long ago I wised up. The details can bring either sorrow or joy, tragedy or security, according to how I respond to meeting them. Even the details bringing tragedy can be received with shaded joy when God is thanked for them and right is done in response to them.
-----It isn’t things and places and events and circumstances which will make either the brightness or the usefulness of my future. God will guide the course of things I can not control according to His will and my prayer. I will guide the course of things I can control by doing as right as I am able, being joyful, and praying always. So, in the past couple years the question of what I will do with the rest of my life has rather morphed into how I will do whatever I do the rest of my life. Sometimes I will do it on the track, other times in the bleachers, but always as right with the Lord and as joyfully as I‘m able. It’s the only way I’ll ever be comfortable with that “Que sera sera” stuff.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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