Live for me

What if we could move through time the way we move through space? What if we could revisit not just the location, but the actual place we knew? To step back into the world we once inhabited, exactly the way we left it, the way we remember it. Recapture the fullness of what was, realizing it as what is. What would we do?

            I dream of walking back into that world where the sun seemed to shine brighter, the air was fresher, the sky more vibrant... In my memory the former places just keep getting better. I go back to where they existed, and wonder why they have been forsaken, or abandoned, or destroyed, or simply changed. I wonder why it was not frozen forever in the moment when i was part of it. I am always aware of a profound sorrow lingering faintly in the back of my mind when I survey the places where I used to belong. It is as if I am haunted by my own ghost, watching the echoes of myself retracing the paths and replaying the actions; and it is all I can do. I desperately want to enter the scene again, to retake my place as the original voice amongst the echoes. I cannot, some unseen barrier prevents me. I put my hand against it like a prisoner, bidding my ghosts to live for me on the other side, and knowing that they will not comply. I cannot retrace the lines. The realization recalled, the magic is broken the magic revoked. Now every little alteration, every unfamiliar face, every memory within cries out against me reminding me that I don't belong here, casting me out all over again. I cannot stay; I cannot linger in these places long. The worlds of yesteryear are forever lost to me: save the fleeting glimpses in fevered dreams.

            I think it is better this way. If I could go back I do not know that I would ever go forward again. If I could go back, I do not know that I could continue at all. If it was the blissful sanctuary I remember fondly, if all the rose colored recollections proved true, if the fantasies are not false; how could I let go? But in my heart I know the truth, the horrible truth that haunts my every journey back in time... The places never existed as we knew them; they were never real, never solid. We constructed them, formed them in our mind. My mind is changed, grown, I've seen more, I know more. I have a different vision now. These eyes would see the dark shadows younger eyes did not. They would notice the imperfections ignored in youth. The context of the vision that causes us to yearn for these places would be broken, it could not hold us. Nothing would be the same. If we reverted to our earlier form, then we have not truly gone anywhere. I only wish to return because I am not who I was.  So the spell is broken, and the magic lost. It would surely end me; leave me lying on the ground, disillusioned beyond all hope for recovery; my cherished memories strewn about me shattered to pieces, destroyed by my own hand. To truly step through the gate of time would be to drive a poisoned blade through my own fragile heart. It is by a sovereign grace that my foolish desire is impossible: withheld for my good by He who stands outside of time.

            God denies us yesterday, and tomorrow: He gives us today in light of eternity. He gives us one world at a time, for a time till the time we arrive in eternity. Someday the current world will pass into history, left behind for something new. Time will brighten the world we currently inhabit like it has all those that came before. We will come to appreciate what we do not, to value what we do not. Somewhere beyond my perception an older man stands with his hand to the glass. This world, like all that came before, and all which are to come are not your home you are just passing through. Live for Him.