Past Tense part 2
The thing about the past is... you can't do anything about it. It is what it is. You can't change it. You can't fix it. You can't make it better. But, on the other hand, you can't make it any worse either. I'll say it again: It is what it is. It happened. And since you can't do anything about it, you really only have two choices. 1. You can learn from it. 2. You can let it define you. Remember that scene from Lion King? Those of you who have seen it. Rafiki the monkey hits Simba with his staff. And Simba asks him why he did that. Rafiki says, "It doesn't matter. It's in the past." Now at this point Simba can let what happened define how he feels about Rafiki. He can let what has come before dictate what comes next. He can say, "You hit me. I don't like you." OR... he can learn from it. Which is what happens. Rafiki swings again... and Simba ducks. He learned from the past. There's an old saying that goes, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Because what goes around comes around. The same things happen over and over because we are all human and there is nothing new under the sun. We're all squirrels trying to find a nut. Most of the time looking for love in all the wrong places. Trying to get something we think we haven't got because we don't know (or believe, or understand) what we have got. And if something gets us a result--even if it's the wrong result--that's what we know. That's what we go back to. So many times we settle for what has come before because we don't believe it can get any better or be any different. It takes a lot to get hit, and instead of getting mad (or trying to get even) to wait until next time... and then duck. It takes a lot to turn the other cheek. It takes a lot to break the cycle. To stop letting what we've known be all we'll ever know. It takes... a more excellent way. It takes someone showing us something different. Giving us something to believe in. It takes the cross. Remember the Roman centurian who, when he saw Jesus die on the cross, professed Him as the Son of God? Seeing is believing. Jesus told us what love is all about. He told us that the greatest love a man can have is to lay his life down for his friends. But head knowledge isn't good enough. He had to SHOW us this love. He had to literally lay His life down for us. He had to bring us OUT so that He could bring us IN. Out of the bondage of sin and death. Out of "our story" our past and all the mistakes we had made, and into HIStory. Into His perfect, abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life. He made our past stop being tense. He gave us a clean start. Not holding what we'd done against us. Forgiven. A clear conscience. Righteousness. Right-standing with Him. IN Him. Because He's in us. What comes next is so much more important that what has come before. What came before PREPARED us for what comes next... but now it's the fun part!