Sometimes I look back at my past and think of “the good ol’ days”. We all like to think of those days. But where we can find fault is being lost in that nostalgia and not being focused on the present. We may count losses that we have suffered, but God always is leading us to something better (Romans 8:28). Ecclesiastes also states, “Better is the end of a thing than its beginning…” and “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (7:8,10). Of course my “good ol’ days” were in elementary school when I didn’t have a care in the world, and I am still rather young. But for someone who perhaps is older, they might look on their past and being discontent with their present. We may think those days were better, but God tells us that He is leading us to so much more, and has been our entire lives. I know when I look back, just within the past four years that I’ve lived here, or even just this last year alone, on how much God’s grace has changed me. I was an immature, selfish punk (probably still am), and have made many mistakes, but that’s in the past. And what’s in the past stays there, especially from God’s perspective. God has led me through so much in these short 25 years of my life, and I want to be happy with where I am and where I am going. I don’t want to look back 10 years from now and think “I had it better back then”. I know I have it good now, I love my life, I love my friends. But I want my life to be better 10 years from now, but I don’t want it to be better circumstantially, I want it to be better because I have grown more content in Christ, and that is the lens from which we must view our past. That is the only way we can look back at our life and know we have it better now then we did then. Our sanctification throughout our life is the most important thing in our relationship with Christ. So I pray that God will continue to grow me, as well as whoever reads this, in sanctification, knowing that the future and who holds it has amazing things in store.