Double Reflections

Sunset in Missouri. Twice, a photo by bobmendo on Flickr.

It's 31 December and many folks, maybe even a significant minority of people on the planet, are pondering and reflecting on 2013 and what was and what might be ahead in 2014. I've been thinking about things I'd like to do, and what I'd like to change and when calendars turn, that seems a good time to accomplish such.

My wife was driving yesterday between Kansas City and St Louis in Missouri, and I saw the fading sun behind me. The angles of the camera and the mirror allowed me to take this shot at 70 miles per hour, which doubly shows the reflection. That is, the sunset is showing on the car window behind me and in the mirror in front of me. I liked that. It said be doubly reflective, to ponder the past a bit and use that reflection as a springboard to the future.

I liked that, too. Past starers can be inhibited from attempting almost anything because of the troubles they accumulated in their own history or that history itself teaches. Sometimes past starers are stuck in their imagination of their own glory, that moment when they scored the winning goal or the girl said 'yes' to him to attend some event. It’s near-to-impossible to walk forward if you are always looking backwards.

Sometimes it's guilt that freezes us in the past. The regrets of not taking that position when the boss offered it, or of taking that little pill at university can be equally damaging to healthy living today. I feel so badly, you might be thinking, about some event, some excessive drinking party, an abortion, a divorce, typing an email on someone else’s email account… you get it. All probably bad. It’s probably that each of these memories brings you pain. We have to find a way out of the unrelenting tyranny of the haunting past.

But rather than seeing those haunts as insurmountable, why not consider all that is past as also noticed by the Almighty? Why not imagine His viewing your past and your life and saying, "Nevertheless, I love you and want a relationship with you." That's utterly freeing. The past fades as quickly as that sunset yesterday. The ever-Present One gives us opportunity to know Him, to love Him back, to be forgiven, to be released from all that super-grandiose thinking or that super-debilitating error-filled past.

Who wouldn't want that?

Reflect on that just now, won't you?

And a second time?

Have a great NEW year 2014!