Old Dogs, New Tricks, and the Futility of Regret

This I regret:  that I didn't memorize scripture more diligently as a young woman.  Here in the middle age of life, where I crave quick access to the life giving elixir of God's word to my soul,  I find the brick hard neurons of a non-compliant brain. An old dog not wanting to learn new tricks.  Desire for truth and light I have like a young man for a nubile young woman.  But the receptors are hard, friends, hard.  Like concrete.

I've been working my way through Isaiah 43 since last August.  I can replay verses 1-18 now.  Eighteen verses in 7 months.  At age 25 it would have taken me 7 weeks.  At age 12, 7 days.

Granted, this is not a full time occupation.  Obviously more time would generate more results.

And I didn't even have a relationship with God til I was 25 years old.  Looking back I wonder at that.  How could I have missed the Great and Mighty One for all those years?  Sleepwalking.  Thinking life was about one thing, when it was about something else entirely.  Lost years.

Isaiah 43:18-19
"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."

I'd bet the house that everyone reading this has regrets about wasted time. About ill used time.  About the actual abuse of time devoted to sin. Get in line behind me.

This is one of the things I love so much about God: He has a full grip on that stuff.  He speaks directly to it: FORGET the former things, DO NOT dwell on the past.  He's giving us permission to leave it behind.

The burden of regret is one of the heavy weights Jesus took to Golgotha.  There it died with Him.

Let it die.

I didn't put as much of the word of God in this 3 pounds of gray matter as I wish.  In myself or my kids.  But concrete can be broken up. Trees have grown from cracks in the sidewalk.  Forget the former things.

I'll keep forging my way forward through Isaiah 43.  The wealth there makes the bank accounts of middle eastern sultans look like chump change.  Well worth forcing those neurons to fire, whether they like it or not. Cause I'm fixin' to be a rich woman.  Striking gold here in the middle years.

Philippians 3:13-14
^"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,  I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann