Rewinding Time

Life moves rapidly, often leaving a minimal amount of time to look back and ponder. Taking time to reflect is a choice one must make and can leave one refreshed, energized, and motivated. However, if done in the wrong way, reflection can lead to regret, depression, and discouragement. Reflection means to carefully consider or contemplate past events. Contemplation of previous occasions - specifically those occurring in one’s own life – is beneficial to one’s soul. Through reflection, beauty, joy, pain, and healing can emerge. In The Confessions of St. Augustine, the aforementioned benefits are made evident. However, there are many aspects and a variety of venues in which to reflect. A few include: reflection in solitude, reflection during fellowship, and reflection in public. As each of these paradigms are expounded on in more detail, one should evaluate the intents of his own heart and be encouraged to think about his own testimony.

Reflection in solitude consists mainly of pondering past events in one’s own life. Opportunities to examine one’s character, actions, and priorities arise. Often a painful and unpleasant process, honest self-examination is a beneficial result of true reflection. However agonizing self-examination may be, this process is absolutely necessary. As one may remember from Plato’s Gorgias, often the hardest and most excruciating times are some of the best. Socrates compared a baker and a doctor, specifically examining the popularity of each with the children. Of course, the doctor was not as loved as the baker was, but the doctor gave the children what was good for them rather than what they wanted. In the same way, many people only love what they want to hear, but it is causing their character to decay. I...

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...reflection in public, one has the opportunity to invest in others’ lives by sharing and rousing those he may have never met to assess their own lives. Yet, in the case of so many, one can rarely locate time to spend meditating on past events. However, one must choose to set apart time for reflection. A time spent in reflection is a time well-spent – a time to be treasured. Contemplation is imperative for the well-being of one’s soul, because reflection is restoring and renewing. As one rewinds his life and reviews it from start to finish, he can experience encouragement, pain, healing, and joy. Through reflection, one will be drawn to the glory of God.

Works Cited

Plato Gorgias
St. Augustine The Confessions Pg. 16-17, Ch.25
NKJV Proverbs 27:17
Homer The Odyssey Book 23.342-353
St. Augustine The Confessions Pg.116, Chapter 16
Homer The Odyssey Book 9, Lines 13-41