Perspective is a funny thing. Have you ever noticed how much you really miss those people who really annoy you when you’re not with them? Or when you were in school, you couldn’t wait for the summer holidays, but a few weeks in, you were waiting to get back to school to se your mates? So often, people wait until a funeral to say the nice things about someone as they look back, but maybe missed it in the moment.
Hindsight is a funny thing.
The Psalms show us how people worshipped God whilst retelling His story. In fact, Scripture itself tells the story of God, looking back at His work through Israel, and His work through the earliest church. It’s important to remember the story of where you’ve come from, of who you were before you were saved, remembering the grace of God in your life. It’s paramount that we recall the faithfulness of God through Israel and church, but that we also remember that He has placed us for now.
I once heard a lady in a church recounting the church’s heritage, it’s regular Sunday school of 60 children. It turned out she was referring to the 1960’s, but had missed that their Messy Church had 90 children but because it on a Saturday, they didn’t consider them as ‘coming to church’!
The other extreme is that we’re constantly looking ahead, planning, dreaming, fantasising, thinking about the next big thing, and we miss what God may be saying to us right now.
What’s your perspective?
Have you been harking after history or fantasising about the future?
God is called you to be here, now, in this season of life. He is with you. But in the unknown, we can tap into the rich resources of God’s rich history through Israel and the church, as we learn how God has worked in the past, that He is the same yesterday, today and forever, and yet remembering that God does a new thing. Remembering God’s faithfulness in our lives can lift us and spur us on – but we must not dwell on the past. Instead, we should ask God what He is asking of us now. What is He teaching us through lockdown? What may God be saying to us, or highlighting to us? When we come out of lockdown, what might God want us to do differently from how we were living a few months ago? Has God given you a holy discontent for something of how life was? God may well be giving us a unique opportunity to fix our eyes on Him, seek Him, and realign our lives in a new way with Him.
I love how Eugene Peterson translates and rephrases Hebrews 12 in the Message:
Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how He did it. Because He never lost sight of where He was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—He could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now He’s there, in the place of honour, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he ploughed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!