Keep Moving Forward

I’ve been writing a blog for several years now.  I started in about 2009, back when I lived in North Sioux City.  And of course, I’ve been writing sermons regularly since 2006, when I became a pastor.  That means I’ve done a lot of writing over the years.  Writing what I believe about God, writing what I believe about what’s going on in the world, writing about what’s going on in my life.   

I look back at my old writings once in a while, often when I’m looking for things to use for a program at the Manor.  Some of them have held up pretty well.  There are some things that I wrote that I’m actually kind of impressed with.  There are things I’ve written about which I wouldn’t change a word, and that I really think I put rather well.

But there are other things.  I read some of the things I wrote and I think, “What in the world was I thinking when I wrote that?”  There are things I wrote that almost seem like they must have been written by someone else.  I can’t believe I was thinking that way, or feeling that way.  That does not necessarily mean that I think the writings are wrong.  Some of them are, some of them are not.  But it does mean that they’re things I would not write now, today.

The reason is that I’m not the same person I was in 2006, or in 2009.  I’ve changed.  We all change over the years.  That’s good.  If we never changed, it would mean we never learned anything.  And that would not be good.  None of us knows everything--I certainly don’t.  If I was exactly the same person, with exactly the same beliefs and thoughts, that I was in 2006, it would mean that I had not made any progress in fourteen years.  

That’s not how life is supposed to work.  We’re always supposed to keep moving forward.  Sometimes we move forward quickly, and sometimes we move forward slowly.  But we always need to keep moving forward.  We always need to keep learning, and keep growing, and keep changing.

When we’re young, we sometimes don’t realize that.  We think we’ll eventually reach a point at which we have things all figured out.  I no longer think that’s true.  Or, if it is, I haven’t reached it yet.  And I don’t think I ever will.

I hope I keep learning, and keep growing, and keep moving forward, all my life.  I hope you do, too.  Because we never get to where we know it all.  There’s always more to learn. 

May we all keep changing all our lives.  Because it’s only through change that we can keep moving forward.