Looking Back or Looking Forward

Looking Back or Looking Forward?

How do you count your life? When you look back over a year, or over a lifetime, what do you count?

Do you count it by its pain - its number of griefs, or its 'might have beens'?

Or do you count it by its achievements and successes - its opportunities capitalized on, its moments of supremacy?

Do you count it by its financial losses (or gains) - its bad advices that cost you, or its bargains like trophies laughing in your bank balance?

Perhaps you count it by its moments of sheer joy when it was at your feet, captive to your flights of emotion. Your senses thrilled and you soared on shimmering wings high above care.

Do you count it by its dinners and parties where you honed your social skills to a high level? Or by the numbers of invitations and size of the Christmas card pile that you can tally up like prizes in a competition?

My friends live where they count their lives by sunsets, every afternoon marking up images in full colour; every setting sun closing a chapter in its book, bringing a conclusion and ending a satisfaction. They live by sunsets.

But I live 'over the hill' and count my life by its sunrises. Every sunrise brings healing in its wings for earth and spirit. Every morning a thank you for newness of day, for newness of thought, for newness of access to a present Lord.

Every awakening a prayer resort, a Dayspring from the eastern sky like a mini second coming of the Lord.

Do you count your life looking back or count it looking forward?

Looking back, "Make us to know how few are our days" Psalm 90:12.

Looking forward, "...we will be with the Lord forever." 1st Thessalonians 4:1