It can be healthy from time to time to take some time to reflect on one’s own life and the decisions we have made that have shaped us to be the way we are. Sometimes those decisions have put us in a good spot, and maybe sometimes the very opposite. Ageing does definitely change the way we look at the world. Muhammad Ali (who passed from this earth yesterday) once quoted, “A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life”.
And then there are the “What if’s”. What if I did things differently as a spouse? As a Parent? Or what if I followed that completely different career I was considering? Or what if I still kept that property that is now worth a small fortune? The “what if’s”. A quote from an unknown source reads as follows, “The past is like a handful of dust…its filters through your fingers…little by…little.. I wish for one day I could go back.. In another life I would do things differently…”
The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible had everything nowadays that people are working so hard to strive for….wisdom, wealth and success. But in Chapter 2, written near the end of his life it reads as follows, “So what have I gained from being so wise?” “Nothing,” I answered, “not a thing.” No one remembers wise men, and no one remembers fools. In days to come, we will all be forgotten. We must all die—wise and foolish alike. So life came to mean nothing to me, because everything in it had brought me nothing but trouble. it had all been useless; I had been chasing the wind.”
Image Source Hillsdale Presbyterian Cemetery
Tomorrow (June 5th, 2016) there will be a Decoration Day service for the Hillsdale Presbyterian Cemetery on Highway 93, but with thunderstorms in the forecast, the service will be held back at the church at 6 Mill St. West (The regular morning service will still be at the church at 10:30 with a sermon title “How Jesus Conducted Funerals”) .The Decoration Day service will be an opportunity to pay our respects to loved ones who have passed on, whose memories are still vivid and fresh on our minds. It will give us the time to reflect on our family and church heritage. The cemetery goes right back to the early settlement days of Hillsdale. Many grave markers contain names of people who once lived on this earth, but with the passage of time are now forgotten. They are real people just like you and me and very likely these people would had times of the “what if’s” as well.
From the words of Jesus in Matthew 16:26, “What gain will you have if you gained the whole world but lost your soul?” We spend a lot of time and effort on the decisions of this life, “Where to attend school, who to marry, where to work, where to live” but little thought is given for our eternal destiny. Jesus said in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
My Sunday Blog 