We’re experiencing some weird weather.  Excessive cold, abnormally warm, blinding snow, scorching drought, overflowing flooding…you name it, it’s been happening!  What about ‘Polar Vortex’?  Back home in New Jersey, we simply called it a ‘cold snap’!  Big deal…had a couple every winter. ‘Catastrophic weather events’, they’re called now.  The likes of which we’ve never seen before.  Really?  We’re glued to the tube.  Not me.  Drought in California?  Rain here in the Pacific Northwest?  Have seen it all before.  I predict more for the future!  Ain’t I smart?  As my Grandfather Fischer used to say, ‘You’re smart like your father, you dope you’!–and he was the father telling this to his son!!  I do think genius runs in my family!

Weren’t the good old days better?  Foul language and ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ not allowed.  Black-and-white movies and television, radio programs that stretched our imaginations, slide-rulers, diagramming sentences, baseball players who had to work a second job in the winter to make ends meet.

Good old days?  Look at Ecclesiastes 7:10–Solomon warns against such thinking.  He says it’s not even wise to ask about those days.  Why not?  Because it’s more like ‘chasing the wind’.  Living in the past wastes the precious time God gives us right now.  This very moment.  Fresh like ‘daily bread’.  ‘This is the day the Lord has made'(Psalm 118:24).  Like driving a car with that big windshield in front of us as we look forward.  Exactly where we should be looking MOST of the time.  Small rearview and side-view mirrors to glance back infrequently.  Look forward, press ahead, leave behind whatever holds us back.  That’s what the Apostle Paul said(Philippians 3:13-14).

Good old days?  Spending too much time looking back in the rear view mirror of your life?  How about all the time I take thinking about the past?  Like relatives…most long gone.  I miss them.  We had some real characters in our family.   How about Cousin Jane, who was poorly nicknamed ‘Stale Garbage’?  Don’t ask why.  I have no idea.  Marrying someone totally unacceptable to her parents, she escaped from one coast to the other, splitting that little family apart, never to be put back together again.   Aunt Betty and Uncle Herman?  They had the best parties every New Year’s Eve, even though she was terrified that one of her own grandchildren would leave a speck of dust on their plastic-covered living room furniture.  Maybe those weren’t the ‘good old days”!

Press forward…look ahead…to all that God has for us!  Family and friends He has blessed us with NOW!  The work to do for Jesus NOW!  The life He has given us NOW!  The prayers we offer NOW!  Reading our Bibles TODAY!   That’s a life worth living…from NOW on!  Amen?

Prayer:  Lord, we do look forward to all the blessings you have in store for us.  In Jesus’  name.  Amen.