To Live your Life Again

To continue on with Barb's topic from yesterday, I thought I would post this article:

To Live your Life Again

"Show me, O LORD, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life." Psalm 39:4

In his book "Who Switched the Price Tags?" Tony Campolo tells about a survey in which people over age 95 were asked the question, "If you could live your life all over again, what would you do differently?"

Most of the responses fell into three categories. Most people wished they had risked more. For them life had been too safe, too calculated. They fell into a routine and were afraid to break out of it - same job, same neighborhood, same environment, day in and day out. They wonder what adventures they missed because they were fearful of leaving security.

Others wished they had concentrated more on what was really important. For them, life had been filled with details of the routine. The good had become the enemy of the best. As they grew older their schedule became more compressed, and they look back and say to themselves, "Is this all there is to life?"

The third category of people expressed the wish they had done something worthwhile which would have lived on long after they died.

Was this the wish of a certain English missionary? She had no family, and upon her death in a faraway country, natives sold everything she possessed. When sod grew over her grave, it was as if she had never existed. Well, not quite. You see, she had invested herself in the lives of the people she served. She taught them to read and write. She taught them the Word of God, and when Donald Cole arrived where she had lived, he found a solid legacy of faith in the lives of these people. She left behind a testimony to her life, a living legacy in flesh and blood.

"If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?"

I put this question to the late Oswald Sanders when he was 85 years old. The one-time attorney turned missionary statesman and Bible college president said he would not do anything differently. He had no regrets in having served the Lord. For him life had been an adventure and he had invested his life well for the cause of Jesus Christ.

How about you? If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently? In some cases, what's done is done. But in other cases, what you would do if you could do it over again can yet be done. What's to keep you from making an in-flight correction and beginning to move towards that goal? Instead of regretting what you haven't done or weren't
able to do, take positive steps to live your life all over again - starting now. It's possible, and until your frail body has been deprived of live and breath, it's never too late to begin anew.

365 Guidelines for Daily Living © 1997 by Dr. Harold J. Sala: