Almost 43 years ago I was at the shore in New Jersey, looking out over the ocean with a missing, with a longing, with so many memories. We had recently left my homeland, my England. And now life there was over. I recalled the words of William Wordsworth.
I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.
Recently I experienced another painful farewell. We had settled in Georgia, in the northern Atlanta suburb of Woodstock. There we had lived for 23 years. Until now. Now we are in the Philadelphia area, far, far away from Georgia. It will take time before I emotionally, and even intellectually, fully realize that I am no longer there. My life there is in the past. The wonderful past! When what is present is relegated to the past, we often find it so very hard to let go.
There is a strong temptation to dwell upon the past. We romanticize it. We yearn for it. Yet it is gone. We can never return. And so in our hearts we grieve.
However, there is something far more wonderful, more alive, and more colorful than the past. There is the present. There is now! It is all we have. And it is all we need. Our today is enriched, in so many wonderful ways, by our many past experiences. And it is enlivened by hope and by the expectation of even more fulfilling times to come. We have not lost the past. We have brought it with us along the pathway of time.
“This is the day the LORD has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps. 118:24).