What is your number one priority in your life? Does it belong to past memories, present opportunities or future desires? Wise men have differed as to which should come first in importance – yesterday, today, or tomorrow. The poet Longfellow says: “Look not mournfully into the Past. It doesn’t come back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future without fear and with a manly heart.” Excellent though this advice is, it takes no account of the dominating purpose a man should have in his journeying. It is foolish to imagine that we are impelled by our yesterdays to blunder on towards a completely unknown tomorrow. If we are pilgrims let us be pilgrims towards Mecca or a Canterbury; or better, far better, the City of God. The goal makes great the pilgrimage.
As little children we can meander but, as we grow up, we need in our lives “the grand purpose” and by that purpose we are judged. “A good archer is not known by his arrows but by his aim.”
John.
