Things That Matterنموونە

A LIFE WITH NO REGRETS

Do you ever have regrets about your life choices?

It’s common to have nagging anxiety that we’re squandering our time and resources on things that are not important while not focusing enough on the things and people that really do matter. And we can easily imagine that we’ll be sorry about it someday if we don’t make a change. Yet on and on we go, putting the inconsequential ahead of the imperative.

Something’s got to change here. And there’s only so much time ahead in each of our lives to make the change.

We’re always going to make some foolish decisions along the way that we wish we could take back. So it’s probably not possible to live a life with absolutely no regrets. But it most certainly is possible to make changes that take us off the easy path of immersing ourselves in the ordinary and the immediate and put us onto a more intentional path that leads to a life that satisfies and resonates beyond our own mortal existence.

Seneca the Younger, a Roman philosopher, said, “Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.”

Your highest achievement is going to be different from someone else’s. You may never lead thousands or cure cancer or start a nonprofit. But make no mistake: there is a good that you are designed to bring into this world that only you can accomplish, and there are people in your life whom you can serve and love better than anyone else can.

In Matthew 22:37-39, Jesus gives us two overarching goals: love God with all we’ve got, and love our neighbor as ourselves. The outworking of these goals will be different for you than for me, but life is long enough for us to achieve whatever loving actions God wishes for us.

Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Spend some time today, in prayer and thought, considering the God-given opportunities that lie before you to do things that matter.