The Wind of Change

I have a pretty random stream of thoughts tonight, but I'm hoping that I may be able to piece them all together in some coherent fashion as I write. I have found that sometimes just writing everything down brings some order and peace to the thoughts moving in my head.

I was inspired to watch one of my favorite movies tonight, Dead Poets Society. The message of "Carpe Diem, Seize the Day" still resonating in my head, I decided to check my e-mail. The slightly cryptic message residing in my inbox leads me to believe that two of my best friends in the world have finally become new parents for the first time.

It's funny how life can change in the blink of an eye. Just that quickly, everything is different then it was before, and life will never be the same. I look back at my life, and even though I would like to think that I'm the same person I have always been, how can I with all the change I have seen. Change is a scary word to many people, and it can be one of the most beautiful things, or it can be one of the most terrible and traumatic. Over the last few years I have seen both. I have seen friends fall in love, marry and have children. It's surreal to realize that I'm now probably in the minority of my friends as many now have families that include kids. I love to see the happiness in the lives of these people who mean so much to me, but at the same time I miss what once was. Change happens! Change can also be terrible. My life has seen a lot of this change. I have been told of lifelong disease with diabetes. I have seen love turn to angst. I have seen death come to people I have cared about at very young ages. Birth and death.....Change!

Some changes you can't control, but others you can. To quote from Dead Poets Society....

"But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be? "

I have stated before that I feel my life is at a crossroads. I have decided which road I'm going to take, and that will change the course I originally plotted for my life. I’m sometimes afraid of the change, but I know I’m being led by the Holy Spirit. I’m being told to “Seize the Day” choose your path. I love Robert Frost’s poem.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I have chosen my path, but now I start to think back to the line, “That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?" What will my legacy be, and what are my goals for ministry? I have thought a lot about this, and I want my verse to be change. I want to see people changed in a relationship with Christ. I want to be a force for that change, and want to make a difference in people’s lives. I don’t want much; I simply want to change the world!

“Carpe Diem, Seize the Day!”