Exchanging Presents

¹“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matthew 16:25). I think the scope of repentance is actually much bigger than we generally imagine it to be. This verse helps to explain just how all encompassing repentance is. They say that the only constant in life is change. We may find in life occasional islands of stability where certain elements of our lives stay the same, but there is a danger to these periods of changelessness. We may love too well our lives as they are presently constituted, and be reluctant or even hostile when change inevitably comes for us. When the children of Israel were fed manna as they wandered in the wilderness, they were cautioned against taking more manna than they would need for the day. Those who ignored this warning and tried to store up extra found that the following day it spoiled and was full of worms and stank to high heavens. They tried to save up their daily bread but instead they lost it. It is the same with us. We may try to hold onto a particular moment or period of life but the sands of time will continue to slip relentlessly through our fingers. The essence of repentance is about accepting the new present as it arrives and letting go of the past. We tend to focus on the aspect of letting go of our sins and bad habits when it comes to repentance, but true and complete repentance is not just losing the bad in our lives, but also giving up the good for the better and the better for the best. However joyful and content we might be right now, our Heavenly Father has something a thousand times better lined up for us in the future. We can try as hard as we can to freeze time and hold onto this one moment as it continues to age and decay and offer less and less use and enjoyment to us until we have lost even that which we held most dear, or, at the end of each day we can hand back to the Lord the present He gave us, still mostly new and undamaged, and accept a brand new present instead. Starting all over again does not have to be filled with fear and regret. Despite everything we have been through, the Lord has taken care of us every day of our lives. If He asks us to exchange something really great for something that looks really terrible, let's just trust Him that He knows what he's doing and take comfort in the fact that if some of the presents are really bitter, we still get to exchange those too and sooner or later a sweet one will come along again.