Do you wish to live your life again?

I have often thought—as you have— how great it would be to live my life again.  I wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes and would be better equipped to deal with life’s problems.  This, however, would depend on my being as worldly wise as I am now. But that is impossible. Were I a young person again, how could I possess my present mindset?  Since much of the wisdom I have gained was earned through the “school of hard knocks,” I am able look back at the folly of my mistakes and say, “I won’t make those same mistakes again.”  

However, the young people of today don’t have that luxury of retrospection.  They simply don’t have the magnitude and breadth of experiences we have had and cannot benefit from reflection on past shortcomings.  Yet, we still try to inculcate wisdom into our young people–whether it’s our own children, grandchildren, or someone else.  Usually it’s to no avail as they, like us, must learn the “hard way.”  This leaves us with only one way to get a child on the right path in life, and that is to bring them up in a Godly home.  Teach them the way of the Lord.  Pray that it sinks in and draws them into a closer walk with their Creator.  

In the early 1900s, poet Louise Fletcher Tarkington described her impassioned plea to start life afresh when she wrote “The Land of Beginning Again.”  Louise endured a very stormy life as the wife of playwright Booth Tarkington, whose alcoholism led to their divorce.  Their only child, a daughter, developed schizophrenia and died of pneumonia. The closing lines from her immortal poem read: “I wish that there were some wonderful place called the Land of Beginning Again where all our mistakes and all our heartaches, and all of our selfish grief could be dropped like a shabby old coat by the door, and never be put on again.”

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The scripture declares that God will make all things new. It will come at the end of the age: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And, I, John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.”

The Gate to the “Land of Beginning Again” is Christ, who declared: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”