Count Your Blessings #53 – Passing Milestones

I’m not sure whether a ‘milestone’ has the same meaning the world over so here’s the definition from www.dictionary.com.

“milestone”

• A stone marker set up on a roadside to indicate the distance in miles from a given point.
• An important event, as in a person’s career, the history of a nation, or the advancement of knowledge in a field; a turning point.

We still see milestones dotted around the UK countryside and within some towns. Many of them have fallen into disrepair but some are maintained by communities as beloved objects, but I’m not talking about that type of milestone.

The life milestones have come thick and fast in the Chastney family over the last few weeks, and there are a number still to come. There is phrase from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that goes like this:

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.

I feel that milestones deserve a similar saying:

We are born into some milestone, some milestones we achieve, and some milestones are thrust upon us.

We all have birthdays, we are born into them. Three of us in this household have birthdays within a month. Jonathan is the first, followed by Emily and then myself. Birthdays are always milestones because they demonstrate the end of one year and highlight the start of another one. Jonathan is moving through his teens and is going through rapid change that will see him transform from a boy to a man. The young man who had his birthday last week was significantly different to the one who had a birthday twelve months ago.

Being a man I am in nature oriented to achieving goals; aiming for a target; seeking to pass a milestone. The other week we chose to go on a skiing holiday. Part of making that choice was subscribing to a goal of taking the first steps in being an accomplished skier. I can’t speak for the others in the party, but for me there was a level of competency which had to be achieved.

As parents Sue and I have our children’s milestones thrust upon us. As Jonathan transitions through adolescence we have to face our own milestones. We are no longer the parents of child, our role has changed. Sometimes life contrives to thrust other milestones upon us, because that’s life.

Every milestone brings an opportunity to look both ways. We have an opportunity to look back at how we have reached this milestone. We also have the opportunity to look forward to the next milestone. Sometimes a milestone is so big that looking forward from it is difficult, even painful. If all we do is stand at a milestone and look back we can’t move on to the next one. A milestone is meant to mark a point on a journey which is not yet complete, it’s not there to tell you that you have arrived.

As a Christian I see my faith as a journey, with milestones. Sometimes I manage to reach the milestones, sometimes I fall short. It doesn’t stop me trying to reach the next one. The Apostle Paul said it like this:

I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward–to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.

Philippians 3:12–14