This month we are middling about redefining the past. There are memories from my past that do not evoke the warm fuzzies. You may find yourself in that same boat. Maybe you have a hard time understanding the person you were then, or you question if you could have been the same person at all. Society is grappling with how to handle aspects of our national past as well. What if there was a way to cut through all the noise and see the past in a way that makes sense?
One of life’s little blessings is how our memories tend to rearrange themselves in our favor. Remove yourself a matter of years from an event, and the smallest gesture can be lionized. The minor slights against us and the kindnesses shown by us get demonized and romanticized, respectively. Beyond altering our memories, our mind sometimes forgets, and sometimes represses. Of course, an over-forgetful mind may sometimes be a curse!
National memory, unfortunately, seems to work the same way. It is far too easy to look back on past events and lionize this or that nation’s involvement. It is easier still to magnify the dark moments of history while overlooking completely the bright ones. All it takes is a few generations to misremember or forget completely.
This happened to the people of Israel after the death of Joshua. Judges 2:7-10 says, “And the people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the LORD, that he did for Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died, being an hundred and ten years old. And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnathheres, in the mount of Ephraim, on the north side of the hill Gaash. And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.”
As soon as a generation came along that did not know Joshua, the Lord, or the miracles of the Lord, the Israelites raced into apostasy. For us, the Bible is essential when dealing with the past. The Bible defines the past, so that it cannot be redefined by us. Because of the Bible, “we know that the history of the world is the history of what God is doing to glorify Himself by redeeming His fallen creation…” (Biblical Worldview: CFR, p. 369).
The Bible, and the worldview it offers, gives us a context for both our individual and national past. And this includes both the positive and the negative. At the very least, one can say he has had a front row seat to the unfolding of God’s plan! In Isaiah 46, God says, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure…I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it” (vs. 10-11).
And don’t forget that in Romans 8, Paul tells us “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (vs. 28-29). Those verses contain the promise that God can work everything in your life together for the good of achieving His purpose for your life. And that purpose is you being like Jesus.
God redeemed your soul at the moment of your conversion. As God continues, day in and day out, to redeem every aspect of your life, understand it as a work of grace to His glory. Your past, then, and mine, is woven together into the history of the universe; one great tapestry illustrating the grace, majesty, and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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