End of an era

I'm 23, and I'll be finished with my B.A. in May. It almost feels as though I've finished already.

I have no idea what I'll be doing next summer. I could do anything.

My little brother is 11. He plays computer games more than I ever have.

All of the pastors that I grew up with have now left for new and different things. (Gil, the last one, announced his resignation on Sunday; he's going to leadership with Samaritan's Purse/Operation Christmas Child in Central/South America. God bless him.) That's a very large porportion of the older men I've always looked up to as spiritual fathers, now gone.

I've been doing a lot of thinking and talking with friends and strangers about past and future. Every time I get into a conversation with someone, it seems to drift toward the melancholy reminiscense of friends from years gone by. Mostly we try to shift our focus to the brave new future that awaits us as we leave our old lives for the glorious future, but so often that's not an easy thing to focus on: the future is a door, not a window.

My Grandmother had her sisters from B.C. over for a few days, and they spent a lot of time talking about distant and fond memories of the years gone by; when they weren't talking about the past, though, they would talk about the present rather than the future. Inexperience is wasted on the young.

Here's to the sure footsteps along the narrow path.