Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Tuesday December 2, 2008

Having lived what my close friends call a short 67 years and my enemies insist is much too long for a man such as me, I have observed a number of things about people who have stumbled and fail miserable in any effort to get up.

I asked questions about this failure to a class of college students and their answers were insightful considering their age and experience. The number one answer was, "Too many people try to keep you down." Good answer and certainly true as anyone who has ever hit a high bump in the road will testify. Another quality answer was offered by a young woman, a single mother: "My church assures me that I will never be usable to God or any decent person again." Well the Lord knows we certainly do NOT need more such religious killers!

In the few paragraphs I have today I hope to give some hope to the otherwise hopeless. Perhaps you can use this insight from Anatole France who wrote:

"All changes, even the most longed for have their melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another."

The young woman, and the college student as with all who have stumbled, for that matter people with an unsullied record get stuck in some rut in life because they refuse to face the utter truth of Anatole's statement. The statement is the summation of the biblical teaching of dying to self, taking up your cross, and reckoning the past as a dead issue.

I advise people who are attempting to rise above a major mess to cut the ties with yesterday and walk on toward the future Christ has for you. Jesus used an illustration that any gardener can identify with when He said:

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." John 12:24

If a seed is not planted, thus walking away from its life as a seed, it will never become the manifold fruit from the seed. As we spend countless hours, days, even weeks and years pining away over yesterday we will never realize the bountiful life we could be having if we would bury yesterday and get on with living the life abundant.

"We must die to one life before we can enter another."

The question is not "What was your former life about, but what are you doing with your present life?"

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2008 Use with credit

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