The clock ticks down and the end is near

No, I'm not going all "Harold Camping" on you. I'm talking about the fact that as of the next sunrise 50 will have dawned. I’m thinking I will likely wake up tomorrow and not feel much different than today when I was a mere 49.

Have you noticed that kids can’t wait to grow up? If you ask a young child how old they are, seldom do they say “6”. Instead you get something like “6 ½” or “6 ¾”. Or maybe they phrase it like this, “Well, I’m almost 7”. Thinking of kids and their desire to grow up I thought of the stages they go through. For those of us as adults, our “stages” are defined as “spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills, and wills” (I think I’m officially in between the bills and ills stage).

But as kids, man we were in such a hurry to “grow up.” As children, we couldn’t wait to:
• crawl
• walk
• run
• ride a bike
• stay up late (now we long to go to bed early)
• spend the night at a friend’s house
• wear make-up (I never really longed for this one)
• find a girl friend or boyfriend
• get our driver’s license
• get a job (now we fondly think of retirement)
• have our own cell phone (anyone besides me wonder how we lived without these and at the same time want to “chuck” yours some days)
• buy a car

We still have “stages” we long for as adults though I think they are a bit more intense and costly. We long to:
• have kids
• will they ever talk?
• are they ever quiet?
• kindergarten
• retirement
• grandkids

What if we desired and looked with anticipation to our “growing up” spiritually with the same fervor we long for all of these other things?

So with 50 here, today I have reflected (as we old people like to call thinking) on the “good old days” (not really any better today but our memories are selective).

So what time period qualify as the “good old days” for you? For you maybe it was …
• The 90’s – Beanie Babies; Teenie Beanies; Grunge; and the phrase cha-ching
• The 80’s – PacMan; Rubic’s cube; Leg Warmers; and fraggle rock
• The 70’s – 8 track Tapes; platform shoes; and leisure suits (they WILL come back some day … NOT!)
• The 60’s – LP’s; troll dolls; and lava lamps
• The 50’s – (I’ve only been told and read about these days) wax coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside, the 1st hula-hoops, and putting peanuts in your $.10 7 oz. glass coke bottle before you drank it
• The 40’s – party lines on your telephones; and “Big Band” music

All of us can remember some “good old days” … Days when we could spend an entire evening catching fireflies. Days when money issues were handled by whoever was the banker in "Monopoly." Days when it was not strange to have 3-4 "best" friends. Days when “old” referred to people past 30. Days when the worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties". Days when you were finally be tall enough to ride the "big people" rides at the amusement park. Days when a foot of snow was a dream-come true. But what helped those days to be so “good” was the simple existence of “do-overs”; when a mistake could be easily corrected by simply yelling "do over".

So here’s the point in all this rambling (it’s what we old people do to entertain ourselves … ramble). The good ole days are not done! God has given us the opportunity of “do-overs”. The greatest do-over happens when someone is born-again. But even then the need for “do-overs” does not end, that is why God’s mercies are new every morning.