Don't Despair, There Is Still Time To Change Your Life!

"We master our minutes, or we become slaves to them; we use time, or time uses us."    -Source Unknown

Langston Hughes, poet of the Harlem Renaissance, spoke out of the frustration of a people who had been waiting for the dream of freedom to come true. He suggested that when you do not get what you earnestly want and desperately need, either that frustration dries you up, shrivels you; or it creates a boiling rage.

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or does it just explode? Where are you are in your life? What is to be done about good intentions, never fulfilled? Those ambitions, never completed? What about all those dreams of what you could become and what you might make of your life? 

Somewhere around the year 600 B.C., the people of Judah woke up to a day of enormous frustration. They had planned so many wonderful things. They had thought they were on the edge of tremendous national prosperity. They had a fine king, Josiah, who had rebuilt the Temple, had refocused the people, and had energized the nation. 

But one horrible day, at Megiddo, Josiah and Judah’s army marched out to intercept Necho, the Egyptian pharaoh, on his way to do battle with Babylon. On that day, that terrible day, the dreams of the people of Judah were dashed, as on the plain of Megiddo King Josiah lay dying, his army crushed. 

Bad as that was, only a short time later, at Carchemish, another battle, this time with Egypt defeated, but the Babylonians stepping in to take over. Judah, with its bright hopes and its worthy ambitions, was now a vassal of Babylon. Defeated. Dried up like the raisin in the sun.

The prophet Jeremiah reports their plaintive cry: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” Jeremiah, they said, it’s late! We had such high hopes, such fantastic dreams for ourselves! But it’s late! “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

Can you feel that in your own life? You've done part of your education, but you didn't do all that well – and if you don’t get into gear right now you will never have the grades for college. “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

Maybe you’re a parent, and suddenly you see that that child of yours is not a child anymore. Others influence him; there are other sources for her mind to draw on. If you are going to shape that character and guide that heart, it may be too late. “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

Perhaps you’re a man or a woman of a good many years, and you recognize that you have come to a stage in life where there just isn't plenty of time anymore. What is the word of the Lord for those of us who feel as though our dreams have petered out and our visions clouded over, for we are near the end of the summer’s warmth and feel the first chill winds of decline just ahead?

If you and I are living with dried-up dreams and flattened visions, let's not expect God to do for us what we have not been willing to do for ourselves. If we have not been willing to pay the price of disciplined loyalty to our God, He does not reward faithlessness.

We  know what Jeremiah could only dimly perceive – for you and I are on this side of Calvary. We know that even God has His hopes dashed, time and again; even the Creator of heaven and earth cannot see His work completed, but must watch His dreams dry up like raisins in the sun. But, we also know that in Jesus Christ, and at His cross, that same God has paid the price for our deliverance and is doing whatever it takes to bring us back to Himself.

If the harvest be past, the summer ended, and we are not saved – if there are so many things we wanted to do for the Kingdom but did not do – then take heart. Pay the price of discipline and faithfulness and take heart, for “the great physician now is here, the sympathizing Jesus. He speaks the wounded heart to cheer, Oh praise the name of Jesus!” 

There is still time to respond; there is new life; there is something more we can be, even at this late date. For because of the empty tomb, I tell you, there is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole; there is a physician there, to heal the sin-sick soul.

Scripture: Psalm 90:12; Proverbs 16:9; Mark 13:32; James 4:13-15; Jeremiah 29:11; Psalm 39:5-6; Matthew 24:32-33

Prayer: Dear Father, please help me today. I have much to do and very little time. I fear that I may make the wrong decisions and complicate things. Please give me the wisdom to make the right decisions and the strength to follow them through. Amen  

God bless you, 

Darla