Rev. Don Campbell
THOUGHT FOR TODAY, MAY 29, 2017: IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
As the poet has written, “Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these” ‘It might have been.’” “It might have been” speaks of wasted opportunities or wasted potential. There are two things, more than anything else, that cause us to waste opportunities and potential.
The first is misplaced priorities. We spend most of our time and energy on things that will ultimately go up in smoke. Peter warns:
The day of the Lord is surely coming, as unexpectedly as a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the heavenly bodies will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be burned up. And so since everything around us is going to melt away, what holy, godly lives we should be living! You should look forward to that day and hurry it along—the day when God will set the heavens on fire, and the heavenly bodies will melt and disappear in flames. But we are looking forward to God’s promise of new heavens and a new earth afterwards, where there will be only goodness (2 Pet 3:10-13, The Living Bible).
“It is not that we do not believe the Word of God, we just allow the immediate to crowd out the important.”
The second is misguided worry. We spend untold energy worrying about…
• Things that probably will never happen.
• Things that have already happened and cannot be changed.
• Things that we could change if we would stop worrying and get busy.
• Things that don’t matter anyway.
George Washington said that “Worry is the interest paid by one who borrows trouble.”
I would add that the interest is not simple interest, but compounded, compounded not monthly or daily, but hourly.
