Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast.

Today's reading was edited and adapted from Life's Buyways and Way Sides by and Way Sides by J. R. Miller, published in 1895.

It is a great thing to learn to live in the future. St. Paul put the lesson in very plain words

when he said, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth under those things

which are before me, I press toward the mark. To get the full force of these words, it must be remembered that they were written

when St. Paul was an old man, and as a prisoner. It is no unusual thing for the young to look

forward. The world is all before them. They have only stepped on the edge of life, and their lives before them

an unopened, untraversed future, full of bright, beautiful visions, and brilliant hopes.

It draws them forward by a thousand golden possibilities of attainment, achievement, and success.

It is natural, therefore, for the young to look forward impress onward.

But ordinarily, it is not so with the old.

As the years advance, they look back more and more. The future has less and less

to draw them on. The past is their treasure house. It holds the best things of their life,

their best work, their sweetest joys, their most tender friendships.

They have little more to win.

In the short path before them, there are but few flowers which they can hope to pluck.

There is but little room for new achievement.

They can make no new friendships. It is thus natural for the old

to look backward, to live in memory and not in hope. But with St. Paul, we see an old man who lives

holy in the future, even though he is in prison and broken by much suffering and

hardship. Indeed, most would have said that the best, brightest, and grandest part of his career

was behind him. What could there be in the future, for that weary broken old man?

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