“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God”
1 Corinthians 10:31
As we get older, time speeds up. When you’re 12 years old, a year feels like a long time. When you’re 75 years old, a year feels like it’s next week and no big deal. Many people have asked why is it that as we get older in life, the weeks and the years seem to go by faster? An old theory people used to think is: when you’re 70 years old, one year of your life is one-seventeenth of your life, but when you are five years old, one year is twenty percent of your life or one-fifth, this has been proven to be a false idea. That is not why life speeds up. It turns out there are two experiences of time: 1. there is the current experience of time what you are experiencing right now 2. There’s your memory of how you experienced that time.
Our present experience of time has nothing to do with how old we are. It has everything to do with how bored we are, but our memory of that time has to do with how many new experiences we have, so in other words, If you want to slow down the memory of your life, it is all about having new experiences.
The reason children experience the years in such a slow way is that EVERYTHING is new. “Look, Dad, I’ve never seen a bird like that!, “what is that car going by?”
The new experiences that we have, whether they’re interesting or not, if it is a new experience, your memory registers it and slows it down in your memory.
The ideal life then would be as we live our lives, it goes by super fast; you have lots of fun, lots of enjoyable time with people you love, but have lots of new experiences so when you look back, and you think WOW I did a lot in that week. As we get older in life, I think we try to be safer in our need to be more responsible, and sometimes that causes the years and the months to fly by even though the days seem to go awfully slow. All that to say, it is time for us to DO SOME STUFF.
Especially now more than ever after all we’ve gone through in this past year, it is time for us to finally do some stuff. I originally wanted to say do stuff for God, but what I think is better than do stuff for God is actually do stuff in God’s kingdom. The problem with thinking “do stuff for God” is there is a lot of the stuff you’re supposed to do that doesn’t always feel like you’re doing it for God. Helping your neighbor is obviously doing something for God. But sometimes God wants us to do things that build us up and train us for the future that’s about to come. Someone that was really important in my life when I was a kid was this guy who taught me how to play hockey, he had to learn how to play hockey before he could teach me how to play. Sometimes God wants you to just play hockey and just do stuff.
How we view our past causes us to think about how we will define and predict our future. When we are a kid and we think about our future, our future is full of hope and opportunity. We think when I grow up, I’ll be an astronaut or a ballerina or a doctor, and this is a definitive part of being a kid. Even though your idea of what you want to be when you get older changes, it just changes to the next coolest thing you can think of. As we get older, we shift from that. Somehow we think about what I look forward to. Well, I hope in my future sometime next year it’s about time for me to get a mattress……
As we get older, our future shifts from I’m going to be an astronaut to I can’t wait to get a new mattress. I think this is because life is hard, tragic, and disappointing, so many things I thought would happen didn’t happen. So many people I have loved have left, or died, or betrayed me. You may wonder what future someone like me hopes for. Our world and our life, and choices are riddled with tragedy and mistakes. Our life becomes ingrown as we think I’m not going to make any more mistakes, I’m not going to suffer any more tragedy, I’m not going to have any more loss.
We look back on our life, and we see all the times we wish we had taken a risk or done something big or made that leap, and we didn’t. We look at our past, a life full of tragedy, regrets, and lack of faith, and it begins to define our future. God says to you no more, NO MORE, it is time to do something GREAT for God.
God is giving you an opportunity to redeem your history even if it’s all your fault. It is never too late to create a new past.
Your story is not done
You will not be defined by tragedy
You will not be defined by lack of faith
You are not defined by your Mistakes
YOU WILL be defined by the triumph that God had in you;; because you are going to do something great for God