The Test of Retrospection

“On the way home,” I journaled last April – in a land where the weather ever got cold enough to support growing daffodils – “I was concentrating on I know not what – driving, blowing a [bubblegum] bubble – then saw a flash of color in the corner of my eye, and saw the daffodils only in a quickly receding reflection. Oh, I do not want my life to be like that, distracted by the trivial and regretting in retrospect that I’ve somehow missed what is truly important!”
 
I stumbled over those lines this morning, and quickly evaluated the ways I am spending my life these days. Which of the activities which comprise my daily schedule will lead to regret later in life, and which will gladden my heart – and more importantly, God’s heart – when I look back at them decades later? Will it really matter what dress I wore on a given day, or whether I had to eat something I didn’t particularly like for a certain meal? Will it matter that speaking to someone about Jesus was outside of my comfort zone, as long as I obeyed when the call to speak came?
 
May our lives be consumed by what is truly important rather than by the trivial!