Dateline: Jun. 21, 2009
Looking Back...Looking Forward
On Memorial Day last month I wrote the following post.
I turned 40 several months ago and it’s been interesting to me how much more I have reflected back on my life this year more than other years. Though I don’t particularly feel it physically there is this awareness that I am probably closer to eternity, my life may be more or less half over. What a sobering thought. In some ways it seems to have whizzed by, God knew what he was talking about in his word when he declared that our life is only a breath.
Recently I joined Facebook though I am not very into it yet. Because of Facebook however, I have been reconnecting with team members from a mission trip that I took when I was 16. This too has been a catalyst to think about what my life has held since that time. I remember well sitting on a beach in Tahiti during that trip and writing these words:
When all is said when this life is through
Nothing will matter but what was done for you.
What followed in that poem were the thoughts of an imagined old woman looking back on her life regretting that she had not spent it for the Lord.
Years later I read John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life. How I resonated with the message of that book. One of the greatest fears I have carried around is the fear of wasting my life. So here I am half done with this life, has it been wasted? When I look back I could see the love of self and laziness that has consumed so many hours of my life as I’ve pursued entertainment and ease. I could look back and see the sins that have dogged me from that time as a teenager. Pride and desire for recognition, fear, sinful thoughts, and attitudes in my heart that still exist. I could look back and see the ministry that I’ve been a part of in missions, in the church, in my own home and neighborhoods. I could remember a lot of things, and I do; yet what has surprised me most as I’ve reflected back has been the hope I feel.
In my pride I can tend to look at not wasting my life as doing something “important”, noteworthy, as if the only way it would not be wasted is if others would want to read about me when I’m dead. Being 40 has made me realize that there’s a pretty good chance I’ll never be a famous anything and I’ve made peace with that. Some of those childhood dreams have finally died which is not so bad since they were full of self-glory anyway.
Instead, by God’s grace, this is what I see when I look back: a faithful God who has led me, spoken to me so many times in very personal ways, provided for my needs, given me so much grace through so many struggles, enabled me to be a faithful wife and mother, given me increasing desire for Himself, and fills my hears with awe and worship for Him. Only I know the real thoughts and motives behind any good ministry that I’ve been a part of which is why I can say all the more – God is so gracious to me – He truly uses the fools of this world.
I have hope because that same faithful God is unchanging and will be with me to the end. I have hope because by God’s grace as I look back somehow I’m seeing Him more than me. I’m seeing that despite me, God was at work. I have hope because the gospel has been in increasing measure a source of true joy to me and I know that it can only be because of God. I have hope because the wise, sovereign, God of the universe will use even me in my quiet corner of the world for his kingdom purposes.
I never even got this posted onto the blog because I was besieged by despair, feelings of failure and discouragement and basically the opposite of all I had just genuinely written about. It felt as if God was testing me to see if I really believed what I had just written in a moment of inspiration. Was I willing to really have my gaze focused on Him rather than myself and my circumstances? I am ashamed to say that the struggle continued for quite some time as so many feelings of inadequacy plagued me. Is my hope truly in Christ or is it not? Why do I so quickly fall apart at the first sign of hardship?
It’s because I need Christ every moment of my life in the highs and the lows and every in between time. There is absolutely no substitute for trusting in the righteousness of Christ. I am always in need of a Savior and must press on during the peaks and valleys of my experience to know that I am only acceptable to God because of what Christ did for me. He lived the perfect life because I can never even come close to perfection, in 40 years or a lifetime, and I get credit for His perfect life. AMAZING!
I think I was gloriously caught up in a moment of looking back with an uncharacteristically positive view point on Memorial Day and God wanted to also remind me that I can look forward – even on a bad day or a bad week or month and know that I still have that right standing with Him because of Christ. All that I wrote before is true and once again I just needed to repent, believe the gospel, and trust in the Lord. I can look back at my more recent history and give thanks to God for His ever patient mercy toward this fickle sinner!