Ties

As I find myself in cities and places I have been before I find myself grabbling with the ties to yesterday while struggling to take new steps.  This may sound negative.  In reality it is something different.  Yesterday I saw life a particular way.  Today the perspective is changed.  Hopefully my knowledge of how mercy, and acceptance, and equality play out in life is stronger.  I know I aspire to see relationships and circumstances around me in a more holistic light.  I find myself longing to bring out the best in others.  And yet, like others before me, it is far easier to criticize the present than move forward in optimism.  Painting black is simple, colors which complement and inspire is the work of immortals.
 
In politics I rarely find a party that gains votes by being critical, at least not for any length of time.  In sports nobody wins by talking about what not to do.  Even in relationships it isn’t so much what you don’t do as what you do!  Everything sustainable rests on actions plaid out in real, messy, sticky, sometimes ugly, yet always wonderful stuff that makes up this moment in time.  Any movement, no matter how slight, incidental, or hesitant, tells a story to others and most importantly to our self.  It is as if the processing of tying and retying the knots of our lives is an unending task.  We can try hard but we never seem to quite finish things.
 
In the steps of the present I find the struggle to know right and wrong, good and bad, strength and weakness, sometimes confusing.  It is good to remember that even the best model we have of how to live a life said that “righteousness comes from above, where I am with the Father, out of their [Evil’s] sight and control; that judgment takes place as the ruler of this godless world is brought to trial and convicted.” (John 16.10, 11)  We too rest in the arms of Divinity.  The question is simple; do we recognize the ties that bind?