Living Backwards

Living Backwards

“The problem with life is that we understand it backwards but have to live it forwards.”  I heard that saying as I was commuting home on the other day.  Surely, it rings true with so many of us.  At the end of college, we knew exactly how the game works and could get straight “As.”  With every failure and proper hindsight, we realize the pitfalls that we should have avoided.  Each Monday morning of the football season, everyone knows just want the quarterback should have done to win the game.  Yet, the game of life does not lend itself to the review of game film and charting strategies to win during next weekend’s contest.  Life is not a dress rehearsal.  We are always live and unscripted.  Interestingly, however, there is a way to live backwards.

In his best-selling, accessible and practically applicable book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey suggests in the second chapter that we “begin with the end in mind.”  He encourages you to visualize your funeral.  What will be said during the remembrances, testimonials and eulogy?  How will your life be recorded as it relates to the lasting contributions that you made or the lives of others whom your may have touched significantly?  Will relatives, friends and colleagues rise and truthfully detail a list of enduring achievements that you made during your time on earth?  Instead, will Southern gentility force them to polish the meager scraps of your half-hearted activities?  Covey posits that you can write your eulogy by proactively ordering your life to accomplish those things that are most important to you.  We can live backwards by defining our priorities and disciplining ourselves to actualize them.

There are two types of times.  First, there is “chronos” time, which marks the seasons and years of our earthly pilgrimage.  Second, “kairos” time is the divine order, which accomplishes the will and purposes of God according to His perfect orchestration.  Living backwards necessitates a mixture of these two types of time.  Preferably, “kairos” intervenes in “chronos” and redefines its meaning.  In its simplest sense, eternity enters time and provides a lasting significance.  We should keep an eternal perspective always in front of us.

As believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, we are pilgrims passing through this earthly journey.  The world is not our home.  We are in the world but not of it.  Our values inherently conflict with the predominant mores of secular and humanistic culture.  Accordingly, we heed the directives of the Lord Jesus when He tells us to store up treasures in heaven rather on earth where thieves break in and steal and moths and dust corrupt.  In the final analysis, all earthly treasure will corrode and lose its value.  But, eternal treasure never loses its worth.  Interestingly, eternal treasure is directly linked to improving the lives of people.  More specifically, the greatest eternal treasure is sharing the love of God in Christ Jesus with people.  Thereby, they come to know God’s mysterious and majestic desire to commune with them, even though they do not deserve His grace, mercy, peace and love.  The essence of this earthly pilgrimage is found in our willingness to yield ourselves to Almighty God as instruments of His peace and vessels of His love.  In fulfilling the Great Commission of Matthew 28:16-20, we live backwards knowing that our lives ultimately possess eternal significance.

Ironically, you can most assuredly accomplish your future goals by living backwards.  Take a moment and write a list of your five major goals.  Assign a time frame to them.  What will you complete by your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties and in retirement?  Now, make a more detailed list of the practical steps that you must take in order to realize those goals.  As an example, suppose you desire to write and publish a book by the time you are fifty years of age.  You probably will research between thirty-five and forty; you will write between forty and forty-five.  You will edit and revise for the next two years.  Then, you will spend two years acquiring a publisher who will take at least a year to complete the printing and publication of your book.  By living backwards, you have successfully planned the completion of a major future goal.

As you live with the end in mind, you give greater meaning to the present and maximize your ability to make a brighter future.  Work backwards from the end that you have envisioned in order to achieve your worthwhile future goals.  Keep an eternal perspective in mind.  Otherwise, you will become susceptible to being burdened by the “bigness of the small things of this world.”  Remember that worth of earthly riches erodes in time.  Essentially, you need to live backwards in order to have joy as you journey forwards.