A common experience at this time of year is to pick up a Christmas card from an old friend and reflect on the past. Should I have left that job? Should we have stayed at that house? And, if I had, how would things be different?
The idea of having some otherwise hidden aspect of your life supernaturally revealed to you is something that comes up in a number of Christmas films. It also forms the basis of The Family Man.
At the start of this film we are introduced to Jack Campbell and his girlfriend Kate in 1987 as he sets off from the States to the UK, leaving her behind.
We then jump forward thirteen years to see that Jack, with Kate long left behind, is now a rich, powerful and successful Wall Street executive who is able to say that he has everything he wants.
Suddenly – and supernaturally – Jack is given a glimpse of the life that could have been his. He wakes up married to Kate, with children and a job as a tyre salesman.
The film shows how Jack adjusts to this life and ultimately realises that being a ‘family man’ is more rewarding than the wealthier and more powerful life he had on Wall Street.
In the end, Jack is thrown suddenly back to his old life. In an effort to regain the lost happiness he briefly enjoyed, he seeks out his old girlfriend to try to restart their relationship.
It’s no bad thing to review our life at Christmas but cautions need to be raised. After all, remembering can often turn into regretting. The 19th-century poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote:
Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are, ‘It might have been.’
St Paul, who had a lot to regret, was able to write, ‘But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 3:13-14 NIV).
It’s worth learning from our past but we can’t live there. Let’s press forward with wisdom gained from hindsight to fulfil the potential for the future.
