Some time ago I went to see the latest Rocky movie. I've been a fan of these films for years, and I was so excited to see a new chapter. The movie was excellent, albeit a little slow at times. The ending was not what I expected, but it was a fitting ending for the character.
But the purpose of my writing this is not a review of the movie, but rather some thoughts on our lives here at the end of another year, triggered by the movie's storyline.
In the latest movie, Rocky finds himself in a totally different life than the one he knew before. He owns a restaurant and he spends his time there telling stories about his glory days. He is older, most of the people he loved are gone, and he seems to spend a lot of time looking back. In fact, Paulie tells him that he is "living backward". That one line really stuck with me, and it really hit home with me.
I can't help but wonder how many of us look back and think about the way things used to be. How many of us may feel that the glory days are behind them, that they are now just biding time until the end? Maybe we don't have a special person in our life, and we're lonely. We may remember a time when it wasn't that way, and "live backward" in those memories. Maybe we aren't as successful as we thought we would be, and we "live backward" to a time when we made more money or had nicer things.
The apostle Paul wrote "forgetting those things which are behind, I press forward to the mark." As we move into the new year, let's prayerfully consider living forward, rather than backward. I think it is so easy to get caught up in the trap of living in our memories that we fail to see what is available now.
Think about it this way: in a few years, are you going to be looking back at this time, wishing you could relive the memories from now?
