Stretching Forward

Photo by Wesley Souza at Pixels

The devil slinks in and whispers lies when we are the most vulnerable. “No one likes you. You’re rude, selfish, and self-absorbed. Remember what you did back in 1971?”

And on go his accusations.

He wants us to weep for things lost, hang our head with remorse for every mistake we’ve made, and continue yearning for things that might have been, but cannot be. This keeps us from focusing on God and his eternal, unbroken love for us. The devil doesn’t want us to accept God’s forgiveness and move closer to Him. He wants us to remain broken, sorrowing, hopeless.

A death in the family is a low point. Not only do we sorrow for the one we lost, we are acutely reminded of our own mortality, especially if we too are in our so-called golden years. There is more behind us than ahead. At least that is what the devil wants us to believe.

That may be true of life here on earth, but not so of our next life. It goes on for eternity and in less vulnerable moments, we remember that.

St. Paul has a remedy. “For one thing I do: forgetting the things that are behind and stretching forth myself to those that are before.” Phil 3:13.

I like the imagery of stretching forward rather than leaning backward. No one cares what mistake I made back in 1971, especially God. “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our iniquities from us.” Psalm 103:12.

The only exception to looking back is counting all of God’s miracles in our lives, recounting our blessings, and remembering loved ones.

Otherwise, as St. Paul also stated, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”

Stretching, reaching, moving forward with our eyes fixed on God and everything else falls into place. Sounds like a life well lived.