Yesterday we went as a family to see Up – the current film from Disney Pixar.  It’s a great movie; laugh out loud funny in places and sad in others.  If you haven’t seen it yet (and I’m usually pretty slow off the mark with these things so you may well have done) I won’t spoil the plot for you, except for the first few minutes.

It begins with a young Carl Fredrickson dreaming of adventure and meeting a girl (Ellie) who is dreaming of the same things.  He promises Ellie they will visit South America.  There is a wonderful sequence in which we see their lives passing by until Ellie dies and Carl finds himself alone at 78 years old never having done the things they dreamed of.  He is full of regret.

Life can rush by so quickly can’t it?  I don’t want to end up reaching the last years and regretting my decisions.  I felt the same way watching Schindler’s List again this week – very moved again by Schindler’s last words.  Looking at his car and his gold pen and thinking about how much money he had wasted in his life.  Regretting that he didn’t save more lives.  Even though what he did do was brave, courageous and wonderful.

And it happens because at the end of our lives our perspective changes.  We’re no longer caught up in the busyness of life; the everyday.  We can begin to see the eternal.

But we can begin to see the eternal now, if we know where to look.  Because the kingdom of God is eternal.  His Spirit within us is eternal.  Because the consequences for the decisions that we make every day are eternal.

Not all my decisions have been good ones.  Some of my dreams still haven’t happened.  But I know that God is faithful and I know that He is good.  I know that it’s not too late to do the things He has put it in my heart to do.

By the end of the film Carl discovers that Ellie considered her whole life with him to be an adventure.  It seems that she had no regrets.  That’s the way I want to feel when I reach the end of my time on this earth.  How about you?