The Good Ol' Days
"Don’t long for “the good old days,” for you don’t know whether they were any better than these!" Ecclesiastes 7:10
"For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:30
"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." John 14:27
"I remember the days of old; I meditate on all that you have done; I ponder the work of your hands." Psalm 143:5
Ah, the good ol' days . . . Sitting in the kitchen or on the porch shelling pecans, snapping beans, shucking corn. Momma waiting to talk to Janie on the party line with the rotary dial phone. Walking to the Piggly Wiggly® for a fudge pop on a lazy summer day.
It all sounds so wonderfully nostalgic, doesn't it? If only things were like they were back in the good ol' days.
Our memories tend to view the past through a rose-colored rearview mirror. We tend to forget that the whole time we were shelling pecans and snapping beans on that porch we were also swatting flies and mosquitoes. And that party line? What we wouldn't have given for an iPhone back then! Wow!
But you say, "It's the culture and the condition of men's hearts in the past that I long for. I don't care about the things."
I wonder.
Could it be that God loves you and He loves me so much that He would beg our courage, our complete surrender, our sacrifice, and our total dependence on Him in making a true difference every moment of every day?
Could it be that He is using the present culture to exact a choice from us—the choice to forsake the culture and be completely His?
And could it be that He desires to refine us, as purest gold, by requiring us to submit our every word, every step, every response in each and every situation to His lordship, His obedience?
When we go it alone we struggle. But when we yield every thought, every decision to Jesus Christ, life is much easier, and we have the added benefits of complete peace and joy.
Goodnight, Runners.
Comments