Welcoming the Present in Order to Move on From the Past

Personal transformation is challenged, and often thwarted, when we, or others, keep ourselves in the past.

When that happens, we—along with those who pigeonhole us into the person we used to be—are backward-invested rather than present-invested. What hope is there, then, of any future investment if we cannot even get past yesterday to today?

Warren Wiersbe has some great things to say about this, especially in regard to the Apostle Paul—a man who not only promoted, but also lived, the adage, “Don’t look back”:

“When he became a Christian, it was not the end for Paul, but the beginning.”

“And this experience continued in the years to follow. It was a personal experience (‘that I may know Him…’) as Paul walked with Christ, prayed, obeyed His will, and sought to glorify His name…now he had a Friend, a Master, a constant Companion!”

“There were things in Paul’s past that could have been weights to hold him back (1 Tim 1:12-17), but they became inspirations to speed him ahead. The events did not change but his understanding of them changed.”

“So, ‘forgetting those things which are behind’…means that we break the power of the past…We cannot change the past but we can change the meaning of the past.”

“‘To forget’ in the Bible means ‘no longer to be influenced by or affected by.’”

“Too many Christians are shackled by regrets of the past. They are trying to run the race by looking backward!….'The things which are behind' must be set aside and ‘the things which are before’ must take their place.”

I find it appropriate that Wiersbe titled the book in which these quotes appear, Be Joyful.

Because joy and freedom from our past are inextricably linked.

This freedom also entails paying no mind to those who, out of their own warped pride of needing to nurse old wounds, or out of ignorance that some people actually do change for the better, or because they feel jealous of or threatened by the improvements in our character, refuse to live in the present with us. 

And sometimes, they just don't like the "better" version of us! So be it. 

My husband once said, referring to the early months of my faith,

“I noticed the bus was leaving. And I wasn’t on it.” 

Thankfully, as he observed and was a benefactor of the positive difference in me, he eventually did get on the bus, about a year later. 

And that is where we both still find ourselves, side by side, having the best time ever in our lives, today, in the here and in the now. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

Individual and Group Humility Can Still Work Today

“I often reckon with the very fact that I was such a small pebble in a large stream of thousands and thousands of men who went to fight this war.” James Martin Feezel 

Jim Feezel was a U.S. Army veteran of World War II, who drove a tank that broke through one of the main Dachau concentration camp gates on April 29th, 1945. His action was one of the immeasurable acts that led to and made possible the freeing of 30,000 prisoners. 

This quote defines humility in a way not often observable today. 

Feezel reveals an understanding of himself and his place in the world as no less than or greater than the next person’s, but as one individual in a collective of individuals from all walks of life, political leanings and personal backgrounds, who had no problem working as a companion in attaining something so much larger than all of them. 

I believe this attitude, which to me conveys the idea that, although the soldiers were spread out in their platoons, most likely never to meet one another, they were convinced that each one of them was in it just the same. And that, all of them, though individually scattered across fields and forests, could, as one large force of unwavering integrity for the cause—each man in agreement on the big picture of what needs to happen—keep moving forward.

This attitude, so beautifully modeled, is what will still work today, given a chance. 

Jim Fezeel passed away on Thursday, October 15, 2020, at the age of 95. 

We thank you, James, for your service. Godspeed. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

Common Sense and Calm, Please

Joseph Epstein, in his collection of essays titled Narcissus Leaves the Pool, writes:

"The cultivated not only know a great deal but, more important, they know what is significant--they know, not to put too fine a point on it, what is really worth knowing.

Part of being a cultivated person is knowing what to forget...The cultivated person is good at the act of extrapolation: at imagining the unknown on the evidence of the known. He has a strong historical sense, so that he tends to be less impressed by the crisis of the week that agitates the news media, which they in turn use to agitate the rest of us. From his historical sense, he knows that this caravan has passed before, and that another, not very different one will pass through next week and another the week after that."

"The allegiance to common sense implies an automatic diminution of zeal."

The above quotes from Joseph Epstein could not be more applicable to our time.