Thursday, February 28, 2008

The Past Doesn't Equal The Future


This week, I have been sharing stuff that came to me while my son and I were enjoying the Broadway show, The Lion King on Sunday night. In the show, Simba leaves his home, the pride land because of some guilt he was hanging on to. Later, a baboon named Rafiki finds him and asks him to come back to rule over the kingdom, as he is desperately needed.

Simba tells Rafiki that he was heir to the throne in the past but the past does not matter—it is too painful for him to go back and resume his duties. Rafiki proceeds to swat him over the head with his large stick.

Simba says, “Ouch, what did you do that for?!”

Rafiki answers, “It doesn’t matter, it is in the past.”

“Yeah, but it hurt!” Simba replies.

Rafiki then swings his stick again and Simba ducks. Rafiki says, “Ah, but you learned from your past!”

When you look back over your life and cringe at your mistakes, don’t worry. Remember Rafiki’s lesson above. Even though the past can hurt, we can learn from it and we all can improve on it.

The bottom line is that we are all less than perfect. Even the greatest of leaders in the Bible, other than Jesus, were far from perfect. So don’t beat yourself up if you have not been a model leader in the past. Someone once said that the difference between a winner and a loser is that the winner has failed more often.

The past does not have to equal the future. God created each of us to succeed. Today truly is the first day of the rest of your life.

2 comments:

Rick said...

And yet another "out of the park" post, Jim. The Lord's blessin' you this week, my friend! Without Jesus, keeping the past in the past is near impossible. I know I wouldn't be able to do it, nor to have learned from it and to have gotten beyond it to move closer to being the man He created me to be for my wife, kids, family, and friends.

Jim Lange said...

Amen Rick!

Thanks brother!