Glory Days

  I happened to catch one of those movies last night where the main character looks back at his life and wishes he would have made different choices. This particular movie allowed the main character to return to his glory days in high school.  This movie reminded me of a conversation I overhead this past fall as I watched my daughter cheering for her high school football team. Fortunately and unfortunately, it was easy to overhear conversations between parents because everyone was required to practice social distancing in the stands, and conversations tended to be much louder.  Anyways, I overheard this particular man sharing the advice he had given his son. He told his son he needed to put everything he had into practicing for football, because these were the best days of his life, Everything would be downhill after that. The man then continued to talk about his own glory days.  

 I am certainly glad that God the Father does not give us this same advice. I am happy that our heavenly Father always encourages us to be our best, because our days of glory living are yet to come.   God constantly encourages and supports us in countless ways. If we are looking for a “do-over,”  we only need to ask for one in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. God looks at us with love and says, “I forgive you, now go out into the world and try again."  God knows that we have a great deal of potential at every age.

   Perhaps when we really reach our glory days in heaven, we will look at our lives with God’s perspective. Perhaps we will realize that our best days or moments were not when people were applauding us, but rather those moments we sat silently with God and asked for forgiveness for our weakness and failures, and for the chance to try again. And perhaps our very best days were those moments we allowed God's grace to act in our lives and we really did try to become better people.

-Susan