Between Regret and Gratitude

Christmas has come and gone again, and its closeness leads us to a question: Could we not somehow keep the spirit that made Christmas so different a day? For different it was, as we well know. Could we somehow avoid repeating the cycle the poet has suggested?

“We ring the bells and we raise the strain,

We hang up garlands everywhere,

And bid the tapers twinkle fair,

And feast and frolic − and then we go

Back to the same old lives again.”

And now as we close another cycle of seasons, this is a time of looking two ways at once − a time almost of feeling two ways at once, as we move between regret and gratitude: regret for what we should have done and didn’t, but gratitude that we have lived through yet another year, gratitude for the lengthening for our lives, and that there is yet time for some of what we should be doing; gratitude for much that has not happened, that many of our fears have not taken tangible form; gratitude for the future. Perhaps regret would be the dominating feeling for us all if we would let it, because no one of us during the past year has turned in a perfect performance − of that we can be certainly sure. But whatever we have done or left undone, we must not live our lives in looking backward. Not forgetting lessons learned, we must turn around and face the future, using what truth, what facts we have, and living by faith where fuller facts are not as yet in evidence. The fact is, we have come through another year with faith, if not in perfect peace, at least in comparative peace. And still we have the sweet assurance, to quote Robert Millikan’s words, that “the Creator is still on the job.” And so we face “the never-ending flight of future days,” with faith that gratitude may overshadow our regret, if we give honest repentance for the past and a trusting, working faith for the future, as time moves on into the endless reaches of eternity − as God, who made us in His image, is mindful of us all and will lead us, with our willingness, to peach and progress, as He moves His eternal purposes “in His majesty and power.”