As summer slowly glides into fall and the earth's green turns gold against rich blue horizons, I think about our years.  How they too go from supple green to much deeper tones.  A transformation that takes each of us from innocent pastels to wiser shades of almost opaque color, as deep as the wells of our lives.  The winds of time and weather have steadily blown our hearts in one direction or the other, determining the bend and tone of our stature and stance.  Many of us begin to turn our eyes upward, looking to the Source of that gentle wind.  It has caressed us through peace and pain, happiness and heartache.  We have drifted into years of greater understanding - and desperate questions.  We reach still higher, seeking answers and settlement.  Eternity has yet more interest and the things of earth dim in the wake of its majesty and endlessness.  Subconsciously we long for the voice of the One who first spoke us into existence.  Our desire become less of what we can see and more of what we cannot imagine.  Truth becomes the quest.  Our frail minds are stretched with what is next, and we begin to allow the reality of forever to become a subject to ponder - and perhaps look forward to. The heavenly hero we have dreamed about since childhood suddenly wins a place beyond make-believe and our awe in Him takes on the glorious unthinkable!  

Here is a prayer for you, if you are newly contemplating a very old story.  

Philippians 3:10-13:  "I want to know Christ - the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.  I want to know Christ - yes, to know the power of His resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, But one thing I do:  Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.  I press on toward the goal, to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."