A man doesn’t look at his watch to see what time it was. His watch can only tell him what time it is. It doesn’t tell him what time it’s going to be. It tells him what time it is. You can’t lay hold of the past. And you can’t lay hold of the future.
Regret reminds him of what time it was. Perhaps we regret that we cannot have the good times we had. Or we may regret that we have destroyed joy, for ourselves or others.
What is regret but a knowledge of what is right. A knowledge of appropriate restraint. Truth restrains us in “the now”. You’re not going back my friend. And as you reach the future you bring the old man with you. What you did back then, you are doing now. You need a change of heart, not a change of time.
We may look at the past desiring some pleasant time. Or we may look at the past, regretting abject folly. But we can only do this looking from “the now”. The man who lives in Nostalgia does not know what time it is. Regrettably, this is to his constant loss.
Nostalgia will always be beyond our grasp. But regret can happily thrive in our house. All the while, truth says something imperative. “I am here. Come live with me. I am here to offer you life.”
It is impossible to fix a misdeed. The best we can possibly do is offer reparation. And the cost of repair is vastly more than a man’s resources will ever afford. You can’t undo anything, whether good or bad!
Man thinks that by paying for his horrible mistakes, he becomes a righteous man. Perhaps he thinks if he regrets his past enough, there is some reparation made. As if suffering produces anything of value. But no action on our part undoes the death we have born.
Christ Jesus is in the now. No matter what clock you look at, there is the Lord holding out his hand to help stop the engine of regret. Will you reach out and take his help?
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One thing I will say about regret, it is a useful tool. It teaches humility. And in an odd way, it gives validity to the warnings we offer to those who are as blind as we.
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The man who climbs out of an open cesspool is happy to warn those who are walking toward disrepair. Blinded by the darkness of their mind, they stagger toward loss. And isn’t such a man rather frantic as he tries to help his brother?
Their response doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if they hate him. It doesn’t matter if they give him some superficial glory. He knows from experience they are about to encounter regret. He busies himself to remind his brother of the now.
Christ is in the now. And he alone is The Living pure truth. Listen to him. His wisdom and strength are ever-present.
As the blind are walking toward the pit. As they are falling into it. As the shock of their disrepair dawns on their dull minds. As they thrash about to release themselves from their present aberration. As their hands lay hold of solid ground. As they pull themselves out, covered with stench. And as they sit perplexed on the edge of the pit, wondering what to do next, or how they could possibly have been so stupid.
Christ is in the now.
Christ is in the now.
He is not just a historical figure. He is the now.
If you have freed yourself from a certain pit, I promise you, without Christ there’s another one waiting just in front of you.
Answer to yourself, what time is it?
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Words From There 