Classmates.com is a huge website that lets long-lost friends find each other. I guess before you sign up you should decide if you really want to find each other. After all, you don’t look like you used to.
The other day I read the story of a lady who was going to a new dentist. While waiting for her first appointment in the reception room, she noticed his certificate, which had his full name. Suddenly, she remembered that a tall, handsome boy with the same name had been in her high school class some 30 years earlier. As soon as she saw him she knew it was not him. She was sure that the balding, grey-haired dentist with the deeply lined face was way too old to have been her classmate. After he had examined her teeth, she asked him if he had attended the local high school.
“Yes,” he replied.
“When did you graduate?” she asked.
He replied, “In 1971. Why?”
“You were in my class!” she said.
He looked at her closely and then asked, “What did you teach?”
Ouch!
There is a part of this story that I love. I love people who can enjoy life enough that they don’t feel as old as they really are. If we were more like these two, we would do better in life. There are three qualities about these two old friends that I would like to have:
1. They did not focus on what they didn’t have.
2. They did not focus on the negatives.
3. They did not see obstacles to a good life.
Okay, so they didn’t have youth. So what? They had the wisdom that comes with a lifetime of living. Maybe one of them didn’t have hair, but he had an education that caused others to call him Doctor. One of them was at a dentist, but at least she had teeth that the dentist could work on.
So many times when God closes one door for us, we stare at it and grieve so long that we never see the two doors that God has opened. I love God’s promise in Jeremiah 29:11. “ ‘I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”
You must believe that God has good plans for you. Your joy depends on it!
Lonnie Davis