Time goes by

Luke 9:24-25

One year in my Toastmaster's group I gave a speech called 'You Can Never Go Back.' I'd just come back from a visit to my home state. At that time it had been 25 yrs since I'd seen the area. Desire to walk the halls of the old High school again, or to place my feet in the river where we used to swim, or to feel, taste and smell the ocean as I did then guided me.

The trip left empty sadness inside. I was no longer seventeen and the new high school looked old. The building surrounded by a gated fence still nestled in a wooded area but resembled a prison. No longer twelve and able to swim the river near the old bridge was not as big a disappointment as the new freeway that cut off all entrance to the swim area. The stately bridge remained only to resemble a giant ghost across a river no longer used for swimming due to pollution. Did I continue to the ocean? Of course. The beach we use to visit when I was six seemed huge to me then. Now it resembled a cove clutter with seaweed, dirty sand and careless people who left garbage here and there. Disillusioned, I warned others not to relive the past but to live for today.

Twenty yrs later I have a new perspective. Even though the conclusion I came to is accurate 'live for today' there is much to enjoy from yesterday. A few years ago I went back to the grounds of a church I attended while raising children. I stood on a grass knoll and watched people, who I did not know, flow from one place to the other. Warmth swept over me as I remembered friends, my children in Sunday Schools, pastors and leaders and how much I learned about the Lord. I also appreciate all the good news those who now walked around me would hear. A smile came to my heart, not sadness.

Why the change? I think it might deal with Luke 9: 24-25. You see, in the first experience I went back to the past to get, to revive the past and keep my life. In the second experience I remembered a life given away for the cause of Christ. When you loose you life for Him you find life for it continues on. When you keep your life and try to live it over and over you lose even what you had before because the new memory steals the old.

In this world time goes by and life ends. In Christ there is not time and life never ends.