I cannot recall what it was like to be in my mother’s womb. Of course at that point I was incapable of understanding any of the wonders of the created universe into which I would eventually be born. But having been born, I would never go back.

As children, we always looked to the next “phase” of our lives. We wanted to play with the big kids, to go to school, to go to the next grade up, the next school up and so on. We had in mind that there was always something more, and there was.

Do any of us really want to go back? When we were “there” we didn’t want to stay, but to move ahead to the next part of our lives. We wanted to get married, have children and see our family grow, to live our lives.

Even though our lives reach the point where the physical body begins to decline, we seem to understand that we are spiritually hardwired to keep going, to grow, to move along to the next phase or whatever we may call it. The past holds nothing for us. The future on the other hand, holds everything.

Our flesh, however, never learns to see life this way. It never recognizes its temporal nature. The flesh continues to demand to be satisfied in all of its desires (lusts) seemingly attempting all the while to influence us to believe that physical pleasure is the very pinnacle of our existence. Like an immature child, it must always be disciplined, controlled, supervised.

By this time of course, we should have already learned that the greatest pleasures in life have nothing to do with the flesh, and that there are infinitely better things to come than have been experienced here. Like babes in the womb, we wait to be born into eternity with God.

Having lived for a while in this world, however, we have now at least a tiny inkling of what may come.