DAILY BYTE“If life is just a highway, Then the soul is just a car, And objects in the rear-view mirror, may appear closer than they are.” [MEATLOAF from “Objects in the Rear-view Mirror.”]
Commenting on this song the author Ken Gire had the following to say:
“No matter how fast we drive or how far away, we can never escape our past. Even though it is behind us, it is always in our rear-view mirror. And though it seems that the images of our past should grow smaller, the irony is that the farther down life’s highway we travel, the closer they sometimes appear.
Always just a glance away. And always glancing back at us. The images in that mirror may send us safely on our way, or they may send us crashing into a ditch. Such is the power of memories.”
Such is the power of memories!
Sometimes the objects in our rear-view mirror can appear so large that we have to stop the car and turn back. Our past can have such a powerful hold on us that it prevents us from moving forward in any meaningful way. This is why we will spend part of this week looking back at 2008 and trying to learn from the experience. For if we do not heal our past hurts and make peace with yesterday’s mistakes, then we will not be able to move forward in our spiritual journey in 2009.
Paul’s words in Philippians ‘forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead’ are a powerful inspiration in this regard. Before we can strain towards what is ahead we must first forget what is behind.
The word Paul used for ‘forget’ in the Greek can actually be translated as “to forget over a period of time.” His emphasis is to carefully examine your past and to deal with it over a process of time so that you can then move forward.
We need to be students of our past so that we are not held as slaves of our past for such is the potential power the past can have over us.
As Soren Kierkegaard once wrote: “Life must be lived forwards, but it can be understood only backwards.”
If you stop and reflect over the last year, what issues loom large for you in your rear-view mirror?
PRAY AS YOU GO
O’ Lord we pray that you would open a window for us into our past. Help us to look back with wisdom and discernment. Give us the courage to make right we have done wrong and help us to grow into our future by learning from our past. Amen
FOCUS VERSE
Philippians 3:10-12
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Friends, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
