In my daily quiet times I always try to make sure that I spend time writing in my journal. My journal writings are usually nothing really deep or profound, and I don’t write about any one specific thing — just about whatever is on my mind during the quiet time. I have been keeping this same journal on and off for about 3 and a half years. It really is kind of neat to be able to trace your spiritual progress over an extended period of time. But it can also bring you down a bit.

I started keeping this journal at one of the most dynamic points in my spiritual journey. Recently I have been reading back through it beginning with the very first page. As I flip from page to page it is as if I am turning back the pages of time and reading the story of my recent life. The words bring to my mind memories of the days when God was doing new types of things in my life for the first time. As I wrote I felt so inspired and had so much to say. Those were important days in my Christian experience.

But there is a knowledge that I have now that I didn’t have then that causes me to read those old words with a sense of sadness. I now know about some of the decisions I made between that time and now. By reading those words from almost four years ago you would think that I would have been invincible and could never have fallen off my cloud of glory. But I know better now. I know about how, over an extended period of months, I abandoned my first love an fell into a spiritual laziness. I let my guard down and became weak and vulnerable. I began relying on my own strength and considered myself impervious to attack. This led me down a road of failure uncharacteristic of one who had tasted such sweet victory in life. How could I have known when I wrote those words what I was going to fall into in only a matter of months? As I wrote those words so long ago my future held great prospect. As I read them now, I am filled with a sense of sorrow because, even though I didn’t know it then, I know now where those journal entries were headed. Reading those pages is like opening up an old wound.

But thanks be to God the story has yet to be finished. There are more chapters yet to be written; there are even new journals altogether. We can say this in light of the Easter season we are in. The God who raises the dead raises the sun on a new day. With God there is always hope for tomorrow. The doom and gloom of past mistakes and failures does not have to linger. Thanks to God and His grace, every person is salvable.

Today is a new day. We all write pages of life down with every decision we make at every moment. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can come into our lives in their fullness at this exact moment in time and help us make the right decisions. I believe in a God of resurrection who is able and wiling to do a work in our lives that is not merely relative but real. Response to God’s grace in faith not only changes us in relation but in actuality. The future of my past may not have the greatest of outlooks, but the future of my present holds infinite possibilities, for God is the God of the present and it is in the present that He seeks to actualize His great salvation in our lives.