Building Blocks

Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start. ~Nido Qubein


This is an important truth for me to remember, because it is essential of for me to apply this to my life in two ways. What I do at each moment determines what future is built out of my present. How I react to the situations in my life does far more to guide the path of my life than the circumstances, situations and people I am responding to. So I must remember that no matter what is going on in my life and around me, there is never a time when doing the next right thing is not the best possible option. There is no meaningless or insignificant choice where it's ok to blow off right. Because no matter how small the brick is that I place in the construction of my life today, everything that follows my must rest on that foundation. When I choose the wrong or a faulty thing today, my future is weakened, and there will come a point where I will have to try to go back in, tear out the weakened materials, and repair the damage, or there will be a collapse. How much easier and better it is when I choose to build my life with the right materials today so that repairs are not necessary.

The other thing I have to remember is that two states are considered here. The present, my circumstances and what's going on in my life now, and the future, where I will go. The past is not a part of the equation. There is nowhere that I need to go with my life that God can't open the path and allow me to get there, regardless of my past, if I do the next right thing, allow Him to direct my steps, and go and do where and what He wants me to today. Beating myself up with regret and using my past as an excuse not to build today are sure ways to screw up the possibilities for my future. My present circumstances, which are in part a result of my past just as my future circumstances will be effected by my present, determine where I start, not started. What I did yesterday only matters in as much as I need to evaluate if tear downs and rebuilding are necessary. Even if they are, it's what I do to effect those repairs today that matters, not that the repairs need to be made or even why. Everything in my past and freeing myself from its bonds, my present and the overwhelming nature of all I need to do, and the future with its worries and uncertainties are all subjected to what I do right at the moment of the present. When I do what's right for me, when God is the director, then nothing in my past, my present circumstances, or my future obstacles can keep me from building exactly what I am supposed to build in and of my life.