Looking Forward

I love the process of fresh starts – from watching superstars in sports, to celebrities coming back from really dumb choice, to my own attempts.  Everyone is far more optimistic than life gives them a right to be.  Each ignores the experience others have had going through a similar period.  Na?ve optimism seems to be the norm, at least in my life! 
 
For the record, an old city and culture is the model most of us fall into.  “For the next seventy years, a king's lifetime, Tyre will be forgotten.  At the end of the seventy years, Tyre will stage a comeback, but it will be the comeback of a worn-out whore, as in the song: ‘Take a harp, circle the city, unremembered whore.  Sing your old songs, your many old songs.  Maybe someone will remember.’”  (Isaiah 23.15, 16)  Yet nobody does.
 
I look at New York and I find it a city of ongoing fresh starts.  Yesterday’s band can always stage a comeback.  Age is never the determining factor in success.  Wisdom is rarely cornered with age.  Put these together and you find people who listen, accept the reality of what is, and who grow with each experience.  This minority give birth to new Hope.  They are the models for your life and mine, rare gems that they are.
 
Far too often I find myself living in yesterday’s dreams.  Divinity’s lessons are left to the side, discarded and wasted without even a second thought.  Great words of wisdom are mislaid; left to search for someone, anyone, to hear an echo of insight and guidance. 
 
There is an alternative.  I can look forward, looking through God’s eyes, seeing the world with Divinity’s perspective.  The next steps will not be a comeback; yesterday’s life has given me all that it can.  My next steps are ones with a new purpose – action filled compassion.  My role is quiet, and purposeful.  Everything is at stake; understanding what has risk has brought a renewed sense of mission.
 
The opportunity to move forward is available to all.  We are the difference.