Learning from the past – and pressing on towards God’s future

We look back. We remember – and we learn.

What we learn from the past, we bring with us into the present, into our journey into the future.

We cannot turn the clock back. We do not belong to the past. We’re travelling towards the future.

We go back to the book of Genesis – in the beginning. We look forward to the book of Revelation – in the end.

We are no longer at the beginning. We are not yet at the end. We are somewhere in between.

How near are we to the end? That is not for us to say.

We listen to the Word of God. From the beginning, God calls us to look back. He calls us to remember the lessons that come to us from the beginning. When we look back we do not say, “That was for then. We no longer need to concern ourselves with that now.” We ask the Lord “What are you teaching us?”

We listen to the Word of God. From the end, God is calling us on into is future. What the future holds for us we do not know, but we do know this – God will be there for us.

In our journey – from our beginning of our end, we travel from place to place. We will meet many companions on our way. Our personal journey is like the journey from Genesis to Revelation. We do not go directly from Genesis to Revelation. We spend some time with the people of Israel – their deliverance from the land of slavery, their years in the wilderness, their arrival in the promised land. We spend time with the Psalmists, the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles. Above all, we spend time with Jesus, our wonderful Saviour. We go to all those people who reach out to us from the past. We learn from them, but we don’t get locked in the past. We press on towards God’s future.

In our journey towards God’s future, we will learn lessons about ourselves, and we will learn lessons about our God. Our life is very different from the life that people lived in Bible times. We do not lose ourselves in the past. We find our God, reaching out to us from the past and calling us on to his future.

Charles Cameron, better known as Charlie to his friends, lives in Scotland and is a member of the Church of Scotland. He owns several Christian blogs found at the following links:

Old Testament; New Testament