Before & After

           Before and after photos and stories, especially in advertising, tend to attempt to draw the audience or viewer into a comparison mode, whereby it is usually the after part that is propped up.  This is a deliberate tactic used to entice the potential buyer into thinking that perhaps he is currently the "before" and could possibly benefit personally by switching to the "after".  Weight loss or improved bodies comparisons are particularly enticing.  The subliminal message is "here is what you are now, and here is what you could be---and you'd be a happier person by changing.  Most often the ads just neglect the fact that a lot of folks are comfortable in their own skin.

           Those of us who determined that the dark hole we were feeling in our gut just wasn't what life was all about, and then embarked on our journey to become better men, husbands, and fathers, are each a before and after story.  Oh, we may still be overweight or too thin, bald or hairy, nerdy or overly manish, but in the grand scheme of things none of that matters.  What does matter is that because of the journey we taken and the road we are traveling (that long, hard, dirt road called life), we aren't the men we once were.  We're new men.  Not perfect, but new men. 

             Whenever I get to thinking that this business of being a Christian man is not always pleasant, isn't always easy, or seems like never ending work, I sometimes have to fall back on an old saying that really stuck with me:

I'm not the man I should be....

I'm not the man I could be.....

But thank God I'm not the man I used to be.

 

           You see, in typical before and after pictures, stories, and advertising, the "reward" presented is seeable and touchable.  A thinner body, hair on the head, better looks, etc.  The "reward" is enticing, and unless we are totally deluded, we will never look or change to the degree that the "reward" is indicating. 

 

           Our "reward" for embarking on our before and after journey to become Christ following men is really a misnomer.  It's a promise.  From God. And it is written about all over the place in His word.  The "after" us, the new us, is the one that is pleasing to God, and that alone should be what drives us as we struggle from time to time with the little matter we call life.  As new men, the "after" men we are, we have more in our corner going for us than any earthly "before" man--and that is God.

 

Bottom Line Thought:  Are you still the man you used to be?  If so, why?  Isn't it time for a bit of before and after to fill that hole in the gut?