Article November 7, 1964 Issue

Look Back in Gladness

NEIL MILLAR

Never grieve for a missed opportunity. If it still exists, it may still be seized. If not, there are always more opportunities ready for us the moment we are ready for them, because opportunities are symbols of God's unchanging love for man.

To feel regret or anger for past failures, past mistakes, past injustices—past anything—is to be unhappy for that which is not real. It is to occupy ourselves with images which do not concern us. Mrs. Eddy states in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 12), "We own no past, no future, we possess only now." And this "now," how rich it is in opportunities for giving and receiving blessings, for joyous acts of kindness and affection, for present happiness! "Now" is a time of present splendor, present challenge, present victory.

To say of unhappy past experiences, either our own or another's, "What a pity!" or, "If only things had been different!" and so on, is to imply that something wrong has happened or that something right has not. It implies that God has made a mistake or has allowed one to occur. It is to picture as frail and fallible the infinite, unhurried, instantaneous Principle, which calmly governs every concept in the illimitable universe. The perfect, infinite, and eternal contains, causes, or permits no human frailty.

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