Looking Back....

Yesterday
John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it look as though they're here to stay Oh, I believe in yesterday

Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hanging over me oh, yesterday came suddenly

Why she had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday

Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away oh, I believe in yesterday

Why she had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday

The Beatles wrote this song about living in the past. It is a beautiful song but also very sad because too much time living in the past can hinder you from enjoying life in the present.

As time goes by many of us tend to live in the past. I have been guilty of this many times because my past like yours was full of wonderful adventures. Life does have a way of beating down your enthusiasm as you get older but I think that happens also because we let it happen. We don't make enough adjustments along the way. We let other things take control. America is a tough place to live the christian life because we are moving at a high rate of speed in an effort to accumulate a lot of stuff. That means that we're getting a lot of stuff but don't always have the time to enjoy it. Our lives are often dictated by what we accumulate and what we have to do to maintain it all. This kind of hectic pace usually leads us into reminiscing about the good old days.

I received a birthday card on my 40th birthday that I'll never forget. It went something like this;

When you were 20 you thought you could rule the world
When you were 30 you thought you could change the world
When you hit 40 you begin to wonder, what in the world happened?

The Lord created a natural beauty to life. That's what we witness first as a child and adolescent years. The rest of our life is a movie of how and what we give ourselves to and how those things define us and give us identity. We can partake of God's natural beauty as long as we don't replace the simple things in life with complicated weights that bog us down. I am guilty of this myself. I have so much responsibility at times that it causes me to miss the life giving relationships around me. There are too many people that I haven't spent time with because I'm doing my thing. I miss a valuable expression of life when I avoid those important people that have journeyed with me.

Don't you just admire people that live in simplicity? They seem to have such peace.

David wrote something about that in Psalms 116:5,6.

The LORD is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion.
The LORD protects the simplehearted; when I was in great need, he saved me.