Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Glory Days and Fantastic Futures

He had the speedball that no one could hit. She was the prettiest girl that no one would with whom no one would break up. Those were the high school days. Bruce Springsteen calls them "Glory Days" in the song with that title.

Toward the end of the song he sings about the glory days topic:

And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it;
But I probably will.
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
A little of the glory of, well time slips away,
And leaves you with nothing, mister, but
Boring stories of glory days.

Glory days. Well, they'll pass you by;
Glory days. In the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days.

Glory days can become the only days on which we can affectionately reflect if we quit moving into our dreams.

When Jericho fell, the Israelites should have been so pumped up with faith that they moved through the rest of Canaan, claiming the Promised Land that God told them he would deliver into their hands. They eventually got to a point, however, where they were in no hurry whatsoever. There were issues about dividing the land, and still issues about getting the former inhabitants out, but when Joshua approaches them with the problem he simply asks, "How long are you going to slack off?"

It's as though they were making a cross-country trek on route 66, pulled over to roadside park to rest, and stayed there for a couple of years! You can't look back at the progress you've already made and decide that now is the time for you to rest on your laurels for a while. Somehow, when people quit moving they eventually become very satisfied with the rest stop.

If you are graduating from high school this week, you may feel somewhat amazed at how quickly your school years have gone by. If you are like me, you especially feel like your senior year zoomed past – "in the wink of a young girl's eye." All of us hope that your high school experience was fantastic. We hope you will look back on them with thoughts of "glory days."

But none of us, your family in Christ, want you to look toward your future with any thought less than "glory days!" We want you to graduate from high school with your tires rolling, your faith strong, your hope secure, your eyes open, your heart pure, and your dreams big – and getting bigger because you are moving toward them! That's Life at Work!

No comments: