Pushing Onwards

Taking the Initiative Against Despair

Strangely ever since I came back, I have been living like a little hermit crab. Tugging close to my warm and familiar home, work, friends and family. My daily routine is back on track and the lazy bug is hitting on me again! With such much zeal, excitement and joy when I returned, I really wanted a new breath of fresh air to my mind and soul but something keeps bothering me.

Although all alone overseas, I found it totally alright to eat alone, sleep alone, walk alone but now that I am back I suddenly feel really alone. Weird isnt it? Just when I am supposed to be surrounded with everyone I love, I feel so down and past memories are invading my mind. I keep struggling to let these memories past and give myself time to really let it go. But sometimes it just hits you even more when ure despairing.

I keep recollecting on how things would be so different if I did or said something better..but somehow I know the end is still the same. Its irritating me when I am trying all my best to really move on, yet there is this stinging pull that continues to hold me back. Until today God sent me his comforting words through chels and an email from tues group.

chels says:you know in the movie narnia?

chels says:i think this guy was going on a separate path and the boy asked the lion so what happens to that guy?

chels says:and the lion answered,something like this doesn't matter because that is his story now

chels says:and we are not part of it so why bother

chels says:the two of you have gone your separate ways so his story is his now

chels says:and you should go on with yours!

And it helped alot when just on the other window of my comp screen, I read this.

Rise, let us be going —Matthew 26:46
In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples went to sleep when they should have stayed awake, and once they realized what they had done, it produced despair. The sense of having done something irreversible tends to make us despair. We say, "Well, it’s all over and ruined now; what’s the point in trying anymore." If we think this kind of despair is an exception, we are mistaken. It is a very ordinary human experience. Whenever we realize we have not taken advantage of a magnificent opportunity, we are apt to sink into despair.

But Jesus comes and lovingly says to us, in essence, "Sleep on now. That opportunity is lost forever and you can’t change that. But get up, and let’s go on to the next thing." In other words, let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him.

There will be experiences like this in each of our lives. We will have times of despair caused by real events in our lives, and we will be unable to lift ourselves out of them. The disciples, in this instance, had done a downright unthinkable thing— they had gone to sleep instead of watching with Jesus. But our Lord came to them taking the spiritual initiative against their despair and said, in effect, "Get up, and do the next thing." If we are inspired by God, what is the next thing? It is to trust Him absolutely and to pray on the basis of His redemption.

Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.