I do not want today to be the first day of the rest of my life

I can remember that 1960’s saying all too well. It sounded so good back then. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Syntactically it is true. But, experience says it is not.

The saying above was supposed to communicate that there is an endless world of possibilities just waiting for us. It was meant to remind us that we could leave all our past behind and start anew every day. But now, many years later, I realize that the saying is at best a half-truth, and that is giving it the benefit of the doubt. It is true that today is the first day of the rest of your life. However, I now  prize what experience has taught me. A lifetime of mistakes and struggles have taught me what not to do in certain areas. Sadly, I have not yet learned many of the lessons that keep being presented to me over and over and over. It seems as though my learning will never be done. In some ways, I can now begin to understand the Desert Fathers who died with the words, “Lord have mercy!” on their lips. It was not a cry of lack of faith. Rather it was a recognition of just how many opportunities to grow into the likeness of God we have let slip by us.

When I make decisions in my life nowadays, they are informed by a lifetime of experience. Periodically this even keeps me from repeating the same mistakes over and over and over. Sadly, like many Christians throughout history, I find that:

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Yes, I am most grateful to Our Lord Jesus Christ! But the reality is that there is another law at work in me which I am slowly learning to contain by experience, by prayer, by fasting, by reading Scripture, by reading the Fathers, by doing the work I need to do in theology, by practical works of mercy, etc. So, I find myself looking at that saying from the 1960’s and thinking that no, I now only partially agree with it. I am grateful for what experience has taught me. I do not want to forget that nor do I want to have to begin all over again. The small strides I think I may have made have been hard-won and I do not really wish to put them behind me or forget them.

So, it is syntactically true. “Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.” But, it is not really true. Today is the sum of all the experiences, positive and negative, that I have had in my life. Today is the day I can recall what the Lord has done for me. Today is the day when I can say with feeling and with gratitude, “Lord, have mercy.” Today I can look eternity in the face and realize that all I have is of grace. Today I can yet again repent for many wasted opportunities. Today I can yet again choose to follow God, choose to love my neighbor, choose to help the poor, the widow, the orphan, choose to share God’s love with those who most need it. Yes, today is the first day of the rest of my life. But, more importantly, today is the next day of a journey towards wisdom and the likeness of God that began back when my mother had me baptized, and that continued on when I renewed my commitment to the Lord in Mansfield, Ohio in 1970 (as I did yet again many times afterward), and that has kept going through the many intervening years since. May God have mercy on me and keep me in his path, often in spite of myself.