An awesome quote from Tolkien

In The Lord of the Rings there is a quote that I think is really cool. Gandalf is explaining to Frodo the perilous nature of the ring he has inherited. When he hears about how dangerous the ring is Frodo laments,
"I wish the ring had never come to me, I wish none of this had happened." This is the part I like, Gandalf replies, "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide, all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

I can't even begin to say how many times I have wished I lived in a different age. Wouldn't it have been easier to concentrate on God if you lived Medieval times when there wasn't so much to distract you from Him? Wouldn't it have been simply incredible to have actually met Jesus face to face? Then of course I think of how wonderful it would be to have seen the seven wonders of the ancient world, to have seen the now ruined castles as they once were. How spectacular the pyramids, the coliseum, all those ruins which still look incredible today, just think of how magnificent they must have looked long ago when they were first being built. But no matter how much I dream I can't change what time I live in. That isn't my choice. What I can decide is what to do with the time that God has put me in. I may think that I would have been more useful to him if I had lived in some other time, but somehow, even if I can't see how yet, I can be more useful to God now in the 21st century or else he would have put me in the Middle Ages or in ancient Rome. That is what I should be dreaming about, what I can to for God in this age that he has seen as the time I can be the most effective at whatever He wants me to do. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.