Let the past launch you into the future!

"One faces the future with one's past." Pearl S. Buck

The other day the hospice nurse was chatting with mom. They were talking about how mom feels like she is sometimes a burden - something I think most parents feel when they become a little more dependent upon their children for their daily needs. As they chatted, the nurse kindly reminded mom that I appeared to be very happy doing what it takes to keep her safe and well-cared for, then she said that maybe it was my turn to repay mom for the many times I may have been a handful for her in my younger days. While she didn't know me as a kid, she certainly had me 'pegged'! I did my share of things that put mom and dad through heartache and the simple acts I perform today to keep mom safe and well are nothing compared to those times! We all have those 'tales from the past' we'd rather like to keep hidden from view - things we are neither proud of, nor very appealing to onlookers. Yet, they are the very things that actually can launch us into greater things in our present and into our future!

The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ. (Romans 3:21-24 MSG)

This mess we get ourselves into isn't a hole we cannot escape - it is a launching pad for us into realms of grace when God does the launching! Realms of grace that we come to fully know as we are fully known and loved by him each and everyday. He fully knows us - like no other can. His grace is able to help us face our future, not based upon our past reputation and performance, but on his present ample influx of grace in our lives. It is an exchanged life - the past doesn't hold us down when it is placed in his hands - it launches us into new heights of grace-filled living.

I often go back to this very passage from Romans to re-read it - not because I don't believe it - but because I sometimes need reminders that grace HAS DONE the work in my life (and yours). The work is done - the past is just that - and the future is what I need to focus on today (not the past bumblings of my life). The impossible has happened - what I could not do for myself - getting past my past - has happened by sheer and utter grace. While I don't always forget I have a past, I no longer dwell upon it as the present reality of who I am today! I am a new creation (and so are you) - as such, we don't act upon the past, but use it as a catapult to push us into the newness of our present grace-filled life!

It was Pearl Buck who reminded us: "Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members." It isn't my past guilt that 'makes me' do the things I do for mom, but my present love of her made deeper and deeper with each passing year. In fact, the tasks may be hard at times and even become a little taxing on both strength and stamina, but they are rewarded by the even greater return of her love. We aren't bound by our past, but we can allow the experiences of our past to build into our lives a great love for the things we come to value as 'the best' in life! The moments mom poured love into my life when I was far from deserving of her love and grace only pointed out to me how God loves each of us. Grace returned for actions far from deserving of grace! That is how God operates  --  and he wants us each to realize he loved us in our 'past', and continues to love us in our present, preparing to love us in an ever-deepening manner into our future! Just sayin!

Boast only...

“Whoever boasts should boast only about the Lord.” What people say about themselves means nothing. What counts is whether the Lord says they have done well. 

(2 Corinthians 10:17-18 ERV)

Someone once reminded me my present issues and troubles don't determine where my life is headed - they merely make up the place where I can start (or perhaps even start again). I think they may have been quoting Nido Qubein who also reminds us, "Change brings opportunity."  As a novice using Excel spreadsheets, I built spreadsheets and workbooks of data only to find the elements I needed to extract from that plethora of data were so jumbled up I could not really get much meaningful data out of that mess. Over time, I came to realize the significance of not only the data housed in these sheets, but how it was organized in order to make meaningful use of it later on. In life, we often know we are supposed to do something with what it is we have right in front of us, but it is just such a jumbled mess we don't know how to go about it. We want to scrap it all and just get a fresh start. If I had scrapped all those worksheets of data, I'd have to start all that data entry again. Often all we really need in life is a "restructuring" of that which is right in front of us and we can go in a totally different direction than wherever it was we were headed.

In terms of what we say about ourselves while we are in the muddle of a mess we have created often determines how we will look at the mess as defining our destination, or describing the place we "begin again". Seeing "opportunity" in the midst of a mess is harder than one might imagine - because most of us have a tendency to get caught up in the mess. Yet, it is in observing these "disguised opportunities" as "launching pads" that help to drive us to our next destination, not keep us anchored where we are, that we finally move onto the journey that reveals the opportunity hidden deep within that mess! The ideal is that we don't get bogged down in the muddle, but that we see it as a place of beginning or beginning again. The reality is that the muddle clouds our view of the possibilities ahead.

If we could master one thing in life, we'd be all the better for it. What is that one thing? It is that we learn not to boast about ourselves when we are 'doing well', or bemoan the mess we are in because of our actions that bespeak us 'not doing so well'. We are to boast and hope in the Lord - for he is Lord IN and OVER the muddle and mess as much as he is the Lord IN and OVER all the stuff we find pleasing and orderly in our lives. It is in keeping this perspective that we can determine to make the mess a launching pad and not an anchor. Just sayin!