Where to look

Recently I read in a book that while we can only make sense of life by looking backwards we have to face it by looking forwards. I suppose the author was saying that by looking back we can see where we have come from. However, the author did not say that there was any confidence coming from looking forwards. All was uncertain in that regard.

No doubt, we can appreciate to some extent what the person meant. Yet a Christian would not share that outlook completely. After all, a Christian has another direction to look in addition to looking backwards and forwards. The Christian can also look up and express trust in the God who is leading him through life. Moreover, the God in whom he is trusting is not silent, but speaks clearly in his Word, the Bible, about the past, the present and the future.

For that author, the future was not really able to affect the present apart from taking some steps to deal with possible crises and to anticipate the effects of growing old. No doubt, that is common sense. Yet if that is all the future can give to us, then it is sad. There is not an awareness of real hope coming from that view of the future. The individual had no other world to live for, apart from the one that was going to end with death.

Today, we gather to worship God through Jesus and by the activity of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds. We do so with a strong hope about the future that affects us profoundly and enables us to anticipate it with longing and love. Through Jesus, and the triumph of his resurrection, we know that a better world is coming, and of which the presence of the Spirit in our hearts is the divine down-payment. One day, sooner than ever before, the new heavens and the new earth will be here. The longer the past gets, the better the outlook for those who live for a better world, indeed for the best possible world of glory in the presence of the Lord.

Life often means how we view the past, the present and the future. In our past, we have failures; in our present, we have weaknesses; and regarding our future, we probably have fears. Thinking only about them will diminish our faith unless we look at each through what Jesus has done, is doing and will yet do. His sacrifice on the cross means we can be forgiven our sins (not just from the past, but all of them), he is present with us by the Holy Spirit, and he is preparing a place for us to be with him for ever. So we can make sense of life by looking ahead to what is guaranteed for God’s people, both in this life and in the next, which is all connected to the presence of the Lord.