REACHING FORWARD TO WHAT LIES AHEAD

Losing Its Luster – by Abby Kelly 

“Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead…” Philippians 3:14 NIV

Remember when you fell in love? Remember that horribly delicious feeling in the pit of your stomach every time a certain someone entered the room? In college, I was lucky enough to work with my certain someone (who eventually became my forever someone). I spent many shifts trying to tame the butterflies, feign disinterest and blushing deeply. Now we’re married and those butterflies long since stilled their wings, wrapped up in gossamer years and fell asleep. I love my husband deeply, but he doesn’t always “move me like he used to”. Am I speaking for anyone else?

I wonder if our faith is often the same way. Remember the first couple years after you met Jesus. Remember that hungry feeling you had when you opened the Bible, the gut-deep gratitude when you took communion or the impatience you had to tell everyone about Him? Where did the butterflies go?

C.S. Lewis said, “Christianity is the thing itself: and no thing, when you have really started on it, can have for you then and there just the same thrill as the first hint.” But just like the butterflies, Lewis goes on to say that once you begin, you can never go back and each phase is beautiful in its own right and still merely a passage to the most beautiful finale. If we are in the growing phase, the long and routine years, we must hold fast the promise that we cannot even imagine the beauty of what God has in store for us.