The Past and Present You!

When was the last time you went to a high school reunion that wasn’t your own reunion? It is always good to observe the behavior of those present. There are people who will never to go their high school reunion for a number of reasons. I could list the two most popular reasons you wouldn’t go to your reunion:

1. You were the most popular person in school and now you’re flipping burgers
2. You were the quietest angel and now you have three children by three different men or women.

We only experience this phenomenon as we get older and people begin to change. What you were then doesn’t necessarily dictate that this will be you now and vice versa. We all remember the rich kids in the school the ones who got everything they wanted, or the poor kids in school who seemed to be always needing something, or the party kids who were always up to no good, or the kids who just didn’t care about themselves and the world and were just in school to take up a desk.

We know them, we’ve seen, we’ve sat next to them, we were probably one of them.

Anyone who is approaching 30 can say without a doubt that ten years ago I wouldn’t think that I’d be here – whether here is a good thing or a bad thing.

You see we evolve, we change, and we morph into something that we either didn’t expect or we worked towards. The person you will fall in love with and marry one day, may have been a totally different person tens years ago – heck! He may have been sitting in a prison cell ten years ago! Would you still love that person now if you knew what he was then? The simple question we have to ask ourselves is, “who is this person NOW?”

I remember being told that all we have is the present, the past is long gone and future is not guaranteed but the present is the gift that we have been given and should hold near and dear to our hearts.

We have to be able to look at the people around us and not judge them or praise them for who they were or could have been. None of those things matter. What matters is the now, the present, God deals with the past and future – we human beings deal with the present. So if you’re about to marry a man who is active in his church, gives his time to charity, leads a prayer meeting every week, lectures at the local university and holds down a job as a Senior Professional after having completed his two degrees part-time while working on the shop floor of a manufacturing plant – I would think that you’re marrying a good guy regardless of the fact that fifteen years ago he may have sat in a prison cell.

Judgment is not our function and role in this life – our role is to Love. Love as you will notice is in present tense.