And So What?!

It's that time of the year again: when we slow down just long enough to conduct a de rigueur self-examination that we hope will ensure the coming 12 months will better the last.

How did the 365+ days go?

Wonderfully?

Disastrously!

Comme-ci-comme çally?

We scribble, delete, re-phrase; either sitting still long enough for an honest yet compassionate appraisal or mercilessly beating ourselves up about things we cannot change that are nonetheless par for the course.

It is, after all, our lived experiences that make each day different, albeit challenging. If planning ahead automatically changed everything, we'd be tempted to step on an endless repeat cycle - stagnant and clueless - thinking why fix something that isn't broken.

Well, we are, have been or will be - without even realising it - when we buy into the lie that one's future prospects can only be based on one's past or present achievements. This theory may rhyme, but there is no reason to it.

Seasons come and go.

Situations change.

People evolve.

It's called progress. On a playing field that is never level, yes; but at least everyone gets a chance to make it in one form or another.

We live in a giant bubble of our own myopic creation in which everyone is defined by what they have done in times gone by. Which is either vastly underplayed, or contrarily over-accentuated.

Especially in fictional spaces.

Online.

On paper.

On screen...

...like the behemoth otherwise known as Hollywood, for instance, where "you're only as good as your last movie".

Here's the paradox, though.

There are the award-winning productions.

And there are those the critics go ape for.

Yet there are also those that mega-flop at the box office, but eventually achieve cult status and outdo profit projections.

The Shawshank Redemption

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure...

Top Gun...

The Big Lebowski...

Citizen Kane...

Fight Club...

It's A Wonderful World...

'Failures' never archived, always on "must-watch" lists, whose stars went on to have incredible careers. Counted out by the blinkered few, reaffirmed by an eclectic majority.

Many of us are familiar with L. P. Hartley's famous quote: ▪︎The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.▪︎

What isn't as well-known is that it was from his novel, The Go-Between, in which the main character acts as a broker of sorts for a pair of ill-fated lovers.

Although he was a man of faith, I can’t say for sure whether Hartley drew the same parallels as I have. However, as we attempt to plunge into uncharted waters with a lodestone doggedly pointing south, I find them irresistible.

Jesus.

Mediator, arbitrator, intermediary, proxy.

Essentially, the ultimate go-between.

Should we choose to look up to where the North Star beams an Indelible path, we see that the hope that lies before us defies any sense of lengthy agonising about a past that is far from being a repetitive stumbling block.

We've got this because He's got us.

Job's a good'un!

😎

📖 For this reason Christ is the one who arranges a new covenant, so that those who have been called by God may receive the eternal blessings that God has promised. This can be done because there has been a death which sets people free from the wrongs they did while the first covenant was in effect.

Hebrews 9:15 GNT (YouVersion)

📖 “Come now, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.

Isaiah 1:18 NLT (YouVersion)

📖 Set your gaze on the path before you. With fixed purpose, looking straight ahead, ignore life’s distractions.

Proverbs 4:25 TPT (YouVersion)

🦉Suspended pieces of lodestone were the first magnetic compasses. Chinese in origin, they were originally called "South Pointing Fish". (Wikipedia)

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