An elderly missionary was the guest speaker at our Church.  She testified about the amazing things God was doing in a perilous part of the world.  Her presence brought a lot of visitors that day.  Fellow missionaries and people who had supported her for many years.  In particular, a retired couple who in their younger days had been with her in New Guinea. 

After the service, most congregation members move downstairs to the Church café for tea, coffee, and fellowship.  (There’s no coffee machine, simply urns where you make your own cuppa!)  I saw the retired couple sitting alone, so I sat with them to chat.  They told me they had been in New Guinea for work at the same time the missionary was there, so God had used the husband’s job to position them to be of service to the missionary and the work God had given her to do.      

As they spoke to me this quiet couple came alive.  They were reliving their experiences.  Then, there in the café, they sang to me in Pidgin English.  I could see from the distant look in their eyes that they were back in New Guinea in their glory days.  I have never forgotten them.

Someone’s glory days are a period when they were very successful.  It’s not an expression you hear very much now but people still love to reminisce about their glory days. I often share my experiences here.  Have I become like that couple?  Living in the past and coming alive when I’m sharing about Kid’s Ministry experiences from years ago.  (Well, we did have some good times!) 

I was thinking about all this because a new year has begun.  It’s wonderful to revisit your glory days but you can’t live there.  Living in the past can mean you are ignoring the present and what God has for you in the future. 

Ephesians 2:8-10 says, ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.’

Good works do not save us but they are meant to be the result of salvation.  God created you with purpose and intentionality to use your skills and abilities to do good which will bring Him glory.  What we accomplish this year may not look the same as what we accomplished in our glory days but it is unique in that God planned it for us to do.  How wonderful that we get to contribute to what God is doing in the world!  He gives our lives purpose.

“Nothing in the past is equal to the present, and nothing in

            the present can equal the things of tomorrow.  Tomorrow should

            be filled with holy expectations.”  Smith Wigglesworth.

I pray that this year will be a year of new opportunities for us and that we will be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit to leave the old behind to embrace the new that God has in store.