Getting older brings with it a whole new awareness of life, of choice, of consequence and of free will, by virtue of awareness and improved cognition of such.
When we’re younger, we often don’t think in terms of either our own longevity or of the longevity of consequences associated with our choices. We see life as much more forgiving, ourselves as more enduring, and the world as more utopian. But with age and some share of wisdom accumulated in us, we start to see that we have to carry and bear the weight of our prior choices, and all the consequences as a result of them.
Much like the ghostly Jacob Marley in the fabled and often retold story “A Christmas Carol”, written by Charles Dickens, we see the self-punitive effects of the burdens assuaged by sin and wrongful choices. It is an inescapable fact, no matter how much we think we can outrun the very things in life we live, in which we participate and for which we have chosen to partake; we just can’t! So with wisdom, hopefully, we learn to temper and discern our choices in accordance with our reflections of possible responsibility and probable accountability. No one, even those who don’t grasp the premise of taking their own fair share of responsibility, is free from the accountability. You can deny, run, hide, sneak off and practice every manner of evasive maneuver, but accountability will come to call at some time. It’s not that which is a threat, but rather a promise.
So in living this life, it is wise to keep track of not only your own choices, but also your fair share of the resulting impact of those choices. For one day, we all come face to face with the accounting, the costs to our own souls and the price paid by the rest of humanity. No one is perfect, no one is above the fray of being human in a very human world. But to recklessly disregard the consequences first for others in the share they must bear but also to self is to foolhardily and selfishly disregard the chains growing heavier upon ones own neck! And we’ve got many more examples of this than the holiday reminder given us through Ebenezer Scrooge!
Look at the world about us today, so many think they aren’t accountable to anyone, including themselves! Freedom feels to the human soul like a light burden born in living, not like the weighted heaviness of wrong choices. Freedom . . the type the soul craves, is not being free from responsibility or discipline; but rather being free from the burdensome chains and weights we forge as a result of our own wrongful choices, that type of freedom only comes with wisdom!
Today I’m exploring! For me, that means equal doses of faith, curiosity, wonder, happiness, contentment and peace. It’s all a most-glorious cake, topped off with a sweet and delicious helping of gratitude! For without my awareness and sense of gratitude for each measure of those components mentioned in the mix above, I would never experience any joy at all! 
believe especially so that I would seek Him and find Him in it all! If we don’t practice living first in quiet contemplation, in discovery, and especially in gratitude – with a heart intent on such pursuits and such ends, we have a much harder time finding ourselves and finding Him! Make today a great day of possibility, but also make it a day in which you set about to discover something about yourself and God! Even in a flower, or a child’s smile, a bird’s flight or a mountain majestically-etched to great heights of strength and endurance over many millenniums . . . or there within yourself as you go about your day, you will find Him!
cherylriesauthor 