Family member, today is all we have

Photo by Val Vesa on Unsplash

Ministries of reconciliation are pretty much all that matters in life. Everything else is passing away.

Eternity has been set into our hearts, and there is nothing any of us can do about it. The proof of this is death. It always stops us in our tracks. And I’m not talking about the person who has died.

Death has a way of bringing us to our senses.

Death speaks of a point in time where reconciliation is too late. Regret ensues. And that causes pain. And grief won’t be released unless we bear the pain honestly, yet we often appease the pain through practices that cause even more pain.

Family member, today is all we have. There is no such thing as tomorrow, even if we know that tomorrow does come. We take each other far too much for granted. We will only know this when it is too late, even though we both had countless reminders.

As I drove down a forest highway recently, I came to acknowledge a truth we all must face: those trees beside the road will out survive us. The ornate statues, the roadways, the rivers, and the undulating earth… all these and more are fixtures in our environment. We are like blades of grass.

Yet, though we are so transitory as we step upon this earth, we are eternal beings unlike statues and roadways and rivers and undulations. We know that when a family member goes into death, or we lose them to dementia, they are gone. The extent of our sorrow is incalculable.

We never quite had enough time to plan for something so permanent.

This is a sobering topic, I know that. Some, maybe indeed many, do not like venturing into the temerity of reality. It is a harsh reminder that we are not in control. And yet wisdom beckons to us an eternal reminder to do what we can do today taking nothing for granted about tomorrow.

If there is anything that will motivate us
to forgive someone
who has wronged or harmed or betrayed us,
let it be that we recognise that
the hurt is temporary, but forgiveness is eternal.

As we give over our past and place it in the hands of God, we find our future is opened up and it is chock-full of possibility.

As we do what we can only do now, that is to reach out and into a loved one’s life, we risk our heart for nothing else but love, and that risk is worth it for the regret we reconcile, for the peace that pervades.

When we have agreed that we are no longer in the business of regret, we have everything in us that we need to forgive our past to move on in the present ready for our eternal future as it inevitably unfolds.