Progress or Re-gress

About 2 months or so ago, I noticed a nice elderly man in the local grocery store.  He looked as he belonged in our middle/upper class grocery store and I almost didn't give him a second thought.  Normally, I wouldn't have paid much attention to his cart, but I noticed his cart that day.  He had a box of butter or margarine and one or two other items, but not much.  That hit me for some reason and I started thinking of how different the foods we eat are now versus when this gentleman was young.  Back then, we didn't have the modern advances we have now like hydrogenated/partially hydrogenated oils, 2-3 kinds of fast food/drive throughs on every corner, gas stations actually sold gas and not lunch, etc.  Is that progress or what?

Let's think of other ways that we've "progressed"... Prayer out of schools, metal detectors in and teen pregnancy booming.  More two income families, more divorce, more debt and less concern about either. More individualism and less individual responsibility.  Tolerance for every belief under the sun, except for the One who made that sun.

So, we now have progressed this far during my lifetime.  I am about to turn 40, so any of you out there older than me, feel free to chime in about your memories.  Any of you my age and younger, tell me... How does this progress sound?  If this is progress, I want to regress.   I want more real food, more real family time and most of all more real time one-on-One with my creator and the One who paid for my salvation.  I've taken steps toward more real food by changing what I eat, I've taken steps toward more family time by taking a job that pays much less than I'm accustomed to making so I can be home every night and am working on devoting more time to the One who I owe it all to.  It is my desire that this will spread to others.   

We see what progression has done to our way of life.  I am determined that my family will NOT be a statistic or a casualty of this progress.  Unless I'm called out of this world, my kids will know their dad and I will be a major part of their lives.  My wife will know that she is safe with me and if I'm late coming home, it is because I'm stuck in traffic or something of that sort.  There is a phone call on the way.  My family might not always like me being around, but they will know I will be there.  Now that I'm 95 lbs lighter and in better shape, I can be a bigger part of their lives for longer.  I won't be a spectator with a CPAP and oxygen machine; I will be in the fight, leading the charge for a better way of life.      

Will you join me in regressing?

 May He increase and i decrease,

shane