"And yet you hear people complaining about this present day and age because things were so much better in former times. I wonder what would happen if they could be taken back to the days of their ancestors—would we not still hear them complaining? You may think past ages were good, but it is only because you are not living in them.

How then can you think that past ages were better than your own? From the time of that first Adam to the time of his descendants today, man’s lot has been labor and sweat, thorns and thistles. Have we forgotten the flood and the calamitous times of famine and war whose history has been recorded precisely in order to keep us from complaining to God on account of our own times? Just think what those past ages were like! Is there one of us who does not shudder to hear or read of them? Far from justifying complaints about our own time, they teach us how much we have to be thankful for." (Anonymous)

It is easier in each age to complain about how terrible things are. We are like the Israelites during their forty year journey, they kept looking back at the good old days they had in Egypt. As a result they couldn't enjoy the present moment they were in nor could they be open to the future promise that God had made of a Promised Land. Longing for the past is like Lot's wife, frozen in time. Being in the present moment is a gift from God for us to be thankful as we await the fullness of his gifts to us in the future that will be the now present. The past we do not have, nor will it ever return. The future is not yet, nor can we hasten it. The grace of the present moment is given to us to enjoy and to get the most out of it. As they say: "Learn to smell the roses of the present moment."