The Danger of Looking Back and the Blessing of Remembering

This week is a time for remembering. This coming Sunday is the Sunday of all Sundays as we celebrate our living Lord Jesus Christ and the great Salvation He has given to us in His Life, death, burial, and resurrection from the dead.

The way we do that is by remembering Christ in the Lord’s Supper, on Good Friday, and on Easter Sunday. We remember when the story of Jesus became personal and real to us, when we received Jesus Christ into our hearts and were born again to a new relationship with God in Him and the future we have with Him. Hallelujah!

But there is a danger in looking back. Nothing about us points backward. God created us to move forward. We are prone to look back and tempted to go back for all the wrong reasons.

Some look back on “the good old days” with a longing for the way it was to be the way it should be now. That kind of thinking focuses upon something lost rather than something gained. This results in a life of ingratitude and misses the blessings of God today and yesterday.

Then there are those who look back with a longing to go back to “do over” some missed opportunity or mistake. With this backward glare, there is always regret, guilt, and/or condemnation.

We wonder what Lot’s wife was looking back to Sodom to see. Was she wanting to go back, or was she wanting to see them get what they deserved!? Either way, God was letting us know that it may be better to be a pillar of salt than to live with that kind of “backward look.”

In Christ there is now no condemnation, no guilt, nothing left undone. Jesus cried out on the Cross, “It is finished!” In triumph, He buried the past forever and inaugurated the New Creation with that victorious shout!

Still others claim that the past is instructive; learn from it. But God did not create us to look back in order to learn from the past. He created us to learn from Him, today; to ask Him for wisdom, today; to learn His ways and move forward with Him, today. Our foolish forefathers took the bait that we could learn from a tree (Genesis 3) rather than from God. And today, we are still going after that bait; desiring to learn from everything other than from God.

But God commands us to remember. The Hebrew word “remember” in the Old Testament involves much more than our English word “remember.” The Hebrew word “remember” encompassed a trinity of reflection (past), realization (present), and rehearsal (future); all centered upon God.

The Jews were given annual feasts by God in order to reflect upon the majesty and mighty deeds of God for them in the past, to realize that the very same God was active among them and with them right now, and to rehearse the promises of God for the future. We need to redefine our word “remember” to guard against wanting to go back in order to enjoy, to fix, to get back at, and/or to learn something.

And so, let’s remember Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Let’s glance back with gratitude that God did not leave us back there in the past, and that He has led us to where we are today in order to prepare us for what He desires to give us tomorrow. Let’s give thanks and enjoy today what He is doing among us and seek with joyful anticipation for what He has promised to us and prepared for us in the future. It is all about Him, from Him, for Him, and to Him! Hallelujah; Blessed be His Holy Name!