Reflection
Once in a while we pause and seriously reflect on our lives. Meditative and removed from our usual preoccupations we see ourselves as moving through a stream of days and years that have brought us to now. Who we are born evolved from an amazing inter action of hereditary threads. Who we are presently has evolved from a seamless circle of experiences. All our experiences, all the people with whom we related, all our successes and failures have shaped us into the person who is now present. All of them move with us into the future. From the past and the present will emerge the not yet of our lives. Circumstances will change, events will occur beyond our control, but the one thing we can control is who we choose to continue to become based in the integrity of who we now are.
Prayer
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Action
Take some time to review your life, its turning points, your present situation, your hopes for the future.
Suggested Reading
I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
John 8:12
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:2
So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
T.S.Eliot, Burnt Norton
Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.
D.L. Moody
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
Douglas Adams
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
George Bernard Shaw
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.
Arundhati Roy
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Søren Kierkegaard
Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.
e.e. Cummings
Yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday
a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Kalidasa