What would you say?

I have an app, and that saying is about to take over all our lives if it hasn't already, that flashes me little messages. I'm not exactly sure what the point of it is, but it's quite friendly and positive and tells me where I am most of the time and what I've got ahead of me so I don't talk back to it.

But last night, for some reason, it popped a question on me.

Out of the blue, this appeared: "If you could, what would you tell yourself 10 years in the past?"

Oh, ugh, ewe, I hate it when questions pop in and won't leave.

This one didn't leave. I pondered. A lot.

I first went to finances. Buy stock in Google and Apple, I thought. But then I figured I would mess that up somehow so I thought I would simply pass some mega-lottery numbers along. That seemed rather selfish, so I journeyed on.

I figured I would talk to myself about the mistakes I have made, and try to correct them. But then I pondered that those mistakes led me to grow almost every time, and they've got me right where I am.

I pondered telling myself something about children or grand-children or correcting something I would have said but didn't or something I said and shouldn't have.

Then I latched on to the biggest event in my life that wasn't dealing with Christ, the automobile accident that hurt my back, or maybe Hurricane Katrina stuff, or maybe ....

Would I have changed jobs? Would I have stayed where I was or moved where we moved or would I be at churches I left or just what the heck would I have done?

It began to dawn on me that these 10 years have been the biggest in a life lived in more then six decades as I type. We lost a couple loved ones within months of each other. We gained rescued pets and loved them as best we could. We gained a passel of grand-children, and we gained in-laws. We lived in two houses and two parsonages, and I left one career to embark on a calling.

I don't know what I would say, exactly, after giving this all sorts of thoughts. But this I do know, I would tell my mother how much I cared for her though I failed to show it enough before she died. I would be kinder to my wife and children and try to be a better grand-father.

I would be a better friend. I would be a better worker. I would be a better writer. I would be a better, well, person.

What would I say? "Love God, love your friends, love your enemies, love your pets, love your congregations, love your God. Be sure they all know it."

There. Said all I could say, or needed to.