We always get so fixated on how God goes before us. Always planning, always preparing, and going beyond where we’re currently at (all great things I firmly believe in by the way).
It can almost feel at times like we can abandon a) the present moment we’re in b) everything that has already happened up until this stage. Which can be totally understandable!
For some, the present moment is a place that is filled with pain and dissatisfaction with the current moment they are in, therefore the idea to escape to a future reality that is better is understandable. And also an appropriate biblical response to “lift our eyes to the hills” in the words of Psalm 121, or to set our minds “things above” as Paul puts it in Colossians 3.
For others, the past is too painful. There has been deep hurt and wounds that the very thought of looking back causes a flare up of everything that has tried to be forgotten. Room for reminiscing on good past moments have been swallowed up by the ripple effect of previous trauma.
Therefore, we see that it is attractive to look forward.
To escape.
To imagine.
To get lost.
This is a cross-world diagnosis both in Christian and non-Christian circles. Whether it’s through drink, drugs, sex, or just trying to convince yourself and God that this is just a barren season that needs to hurry up and pass.
The thought of looking back never crosses the mind. The idea of taking just a moment to pause, reflect, and remember what God has done for you up until this point seems to be forgotten.
I know this has been my story. Anytime I’ve went through some of the hardest things such as anxiety, the thought of any past touches from God in my life are squashed by my current circumstantial emotions and cognitive thinking.
It’s almost like someone might not like the idea of God’s people slowing down, taking a breath, standing back, and ponder the trail of God’s goodness and love that has followed you right up to this stage.
But while it feels like this concept of looking back feels slightly unfamiliar and irrelevant in our current cultural climate, it couldn’t have further from the experience of those we read about in the Bible.
The word ‘remember’ is used over 1,200 times in the Bible. To remember requires a pause from the pace of life you are currently moving at. It requires a moment, as Psalm 77 puts it, to “ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds.”
It’s not really like how we remember short, funny moments in our lives with friends, it’s more than that. It’s taking time to relive the work of God in and around your life, to chew on the mighty works you’ve seen God do.
Looking back to Psalm 23, this verse offers an opportunity to have the goodness and love of God revealed to you in greater measure.
Are you struggling to see the goodness and love of God on your life? Is it tiring to constantly keep imagining what it’s like and questioning whether you’ve actually experience that yet?
Don’t look forward. Look back.
‘Surely your goodness and love will follow me...’
Follow implies that you must be behind something or someone. If I am to follow someone, I have been tracking their every move for some time. I have been to most of the places they have been. I have followed each step they have taken like following someone’s foot trail on a beach.
There will be a trail in your life of where God’s love and His goodness will have followed you. Tracking you down. Being in your every lived moment.
For some as you glance back, will re-encounter the loving goodness of God in each scenario that you walked though in life.
For others some will say, “But what about that really tough moment in my life back then?”
Well we know about someone in the Bible who at one of his lowest moments, found a way to declare a truth that would become a ground-breaking lifeline for the believer now to cling on to.
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish now what is being done, the saving of many lives.” - Genesis 50:20.
Referring back to the question, I pray and believe that at some level you can see God’s goodness and love not just going before you, but also the following trail left behind you. His love and goodness is on your life.
Even through those challenging experiences, God uses that which was brought about to harm you by man, and uses it to accomplish what is now being done within you and your future.
It’s a trail of goodness and love that will surely follow you for all your days.
Many of the Christian faith marker moments in the year focus more on looking back than looking forward. Not stuck in old ways, but just for a moment in time to remember.
But it takes just a moment to pause.
A moment to look back.
A moment to remember.
The very lack you may feeling around you right now, may be unlocked through the art of remembering. Remembering who God is, what He’s done, all that He’s blessed you with.
Take a moment to take a step off the freight train of future and take a moment to consider the past. We are designed with a need to remember the marvellous works of our God. The Israelites were instructed often to remember the miraculous deeds the Lord did for them, but failing to remember, they forgot.
If we forget what God has done, we will inevitably lose the wonder. Our minds are to be constantly exposed to God’s track record of faithfulness and love towards His people throughout the generations.
Equally, if we get stuck there, we’ll go nowhere. However, that isn’t the focus of this writing.
My longing is that we wouldn’t get so caught up in what’s always ahead and calling it hunger. My heart is that we would look back and remember all He has done and from that point, allowing hunger to stir, cry “Do it again God! However you want to.”
But it all comes from a moment of pausing and remembering. It mattered to God that His people remembered, and I pray that is matters to us today.
