I recently heard an advertisement for Blue Bell Ice Cream on the radio. In it a jingle plays that says, "The good ol' days are being made right now." That got me thinking ... man I could seriously go for some Blue Bell Ice Cream ... I mean have you tried their banana pudding flavor?!?! In my humble opinion, that stuff is the pinnacle of ice cream! If you haven't tried it yet, stop what you are doing and go get yourself some! It is that good! It also got me thinking about something a little more profound.
I may be the only one who feels this way, but it seems that I am always wishing my life away. Let me explain. Every stage of life has been fraught with some level of difficulty that has led me to look forward to the next stage. When I was in high school, all I wanted was to get to college. When in college, I wanted to graduate and get to seminary. While in seminary, I could not wait to get to pastor a church. Along the way, I've thought that this certainly must be the most difficult life will be. Inevitably, when I reminisce, I somehow think that the previous stage had to have been easier than whatever I am going through right now. Even today I think about how things have to be easier when our children are adults, and we don't have the hectic schedules and the duties of parenthood. Retirement is a long way off, but it has got to be easier, right?
What I have needed to learn is that I may be looking at those previous stages through rose colored glasses. Sure, life gets tough sometimes, but you may well need to stop and smell the proverbial roses instead of gazing through the rose tint on the lenses. Not to be unnecessarily nihilistic but, as we all know quite well, we only have so many days in this life. We can be miserable in the here and now and constantly look forward to the future while longfully looking at the past. Or perhaps, we could live in the peace, joy, and contentment of Christ in our present. So many people, and therefore, the churches that they compose live in the glory of "The Good Ol' Days." Well, those days are gone. They're history. We cannot go back to them no matter how much we wish we could. In ten, twenty, one-hundred years from now, today might look like the good ol' days and we missed it! We were too busy lamenting our current situation to recognize the beauty of God's blessings right here and right now.
The Word of God tells us in James 4:13-15, "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit'— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'" Today is all you have. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow is not promised. Look at everything that God has done for you. Bask in the Glory of the Lord. Stand in His consuming presence. You might be going through something unspeakably difficult right now. I fully understand and I do not wish to downplay that in any way. I do believe that it can be healthy to look forward to and pursue a brighter future. I am still pursuing that for myself and my family every single day. I guess what I am trying to say to you, and in a large way to myself, is that we must not be absent from the good ol' days that are being made right now! So hug your family tight, go on that vacation, take that risk, pursue God, serve the church, and eat that ice cream. Tomorrow, you might wish you could!
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