Are you the person now, you thought you’d be when you were younger? I would guess for most of us the answer is probably no. For some that “no” is said with a sigh of relief because you were headed down a dangerous or destructive path. For some that “no” is said with dash of disappointment because you think about what might have been. Either way you are the you who is here right now.
When we are very young and dreaming about the future, we don’t know that we need to factor in bills, and taxes, and how much it costs to eat. We idealistically think about how we are going to solve all the problems of the world. One song I like describes this time in our lives perfectly, “We were so young and brilliantly naïve.” We had the solutions, just not the means to implement them.
Whether you are glad your path changed, sad about how things turned out, or feel like you’ve been crushing life since the day you were born, you have not reached the end. The you that is here right now is the you that God wants to use. We must keep our focus on growing and moving forward. Paul says it this way:
Ephesians 4:14-16
14 … we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
Once we have our legs under us in life, we can set to the work of sharing God’s love with the people around us. All of us can serve a purpose in the community. All of us can be used by God no matter how we thought life was going to turn out.