This last weekend I sat down and watched Napoleon Dynamite with my family. My kids love this movie. It’s a huge family favorite in my house! Uncle Rico is one we like to giggle at quite often. Actually, we downright laugh at his character.
There is a clip where Uncle Rico and Kip are sitting on the front porch eating steak and talking about the past. Uncle Rico is talking about his high school football career, and if the coach had just put him in he would have gone pro, and he’d be soaking up life in a hot tub with his soul mate.
Then he looks at Kip and says, “I bet I could throw this football over those mountains.”
He then picks up Kip’s steak and launches it at Napoleon’s face and knocks him off his bike. It’s just a funny clip.
But I got to thinking about it. We as men do that so often, we look at the younger us and think, “I could have done this, I could have done that, if things had just been different.” Sometimes that is a dangerous thing, because we’re not present. We get so distracted with what we could have been that we just simply do nothing with who we presently are.
Phil. 3:13-14 says, “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
That is straight to the point. Have you ever not done what is needed in the present because you were too focused on what could have been or what you thought it should have been?
Looking back every once in a while is good thing to help us remember, but if we become too focused on who we used to be, we can’t run towards the prize that God has for us in the future.
In short, don’t be like Uncle Rico.
Press forward into the prize of Jesus Christ!