A Life Without Regret
How Clear, How Lovely Bright
by A. E. Housman
How clear, how lovely bright,
How beautiful to sight
Those beams of morning play;
How heaven laughs out with glee
Where, like a bird set free,
Up from the eastern sea
Soars the delightful day.
To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
I never kept before.
Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
Falls the remorseful day.
Housman offers this desolate and joyless poem suggesting that, like the rising and setting sun, life begins full of promise, but ends in frustration and regret.
But, must life really be so futile? So fraught with disappointment? Is such a grim prognosis really in order?
For the Christian, the answer is decidedly and happily, no!
Should we choose to embrace and follow Christ as our Good Shepherd, both literally and metaphorically, we may discover many challenges during our earthly journey but, also a life truly lived well, adorned with fullness of joy and wholly absent Housman’s grim and dispiriting “the remorseful day”.
We will enjoy intimacy with God: the Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit, as well as true, enduring and joyful friendships. Allowing Christ to shepherd us, to truly and decisively guide us throughout our lives, directing our steps, ordering our paths, authoring our agendas will offer a life which unfolds as a grand adventure, imbued not only with God’s blessing, but the certain, tantalizing and intoxicating knowledge that we are pilgrims, beckoned daily toward a day and a place so full of life, splendor and grandeur that this life can only pale in comparison to it.
This life ought to be, indeed, is intended to be a life of incomparable meaning and purpose, bejeweled with rich and deep friendships, and a deeply intimate communion with the creator and sustainer of all that is. A life filled with endless curiosity and exploration of the infinite wonders of God’s creation and purposes. And, at last, on that great day, we shall hear our Lord declare, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”
It will be then and there that real living actually begins. We will discover, I think, that as wonderful as this life has been, it has served as only a staging ground for the life to come. Endless and endlessly joyful and perfect.
No, remorse and a haunting parade of “what-ifs” are not our end. Solomon said it well …
“But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn That shines brighter and brighter until the full day” Proverbs 4:18 (NASB)
