Moving Ahead While Looking Back

I have been pasting mementos into large scrapbooks since I was a pre-teen – and long before scrapbooking became a “thing”. No fancy background papers, no special stickers or borders, just glue, tape, and priceless treasures. I watched my mother’s diligent scrapbook collection of greeting cards and loved ones’ accomplishments grow throughout my childhood, and I decided early on that I wanted to do something similar with the things that I deemed important. When my Mom passed two years ago, I inherited the remnants of her life and was reminded of precious relatives who are long gone and activities I participated in as a child and teenager. And, for the first time in many years, I have recently been working my way through my own scrapbooks and remembering the people who mattered way back when and the many special times that I had as a young person and then later as a mother raising my children.

There are church events, school accomplishments, vacation memories, promotions, graduations, weddings, and birth announcements. I kept every ticket and receipt from the dates my husband and I went on during our 21-month courtship. Steak dinners for less than five dollars and $8 concert tickets and $2 movie tickets. Parking at Disneyland on our honeymoon cost fifty cents! And then there are kids’ report cards and school awards along with every program from every event they ever performed in or participated in. Treasures, for sure! Another life, another time. Remembering brings joy to my nostalgic-by-nature soul.

But as I am enjoying these memories, I am reminded that there is also a danger in spending too much time looking at the past. I need to always be careful to store up treasures in heaven rather than on earth (Matthew 6:19-20); and “treasures” are not only money and things, but also anything else that takes priority in our lives or tempts us to boast or find our confidence in ourselves. Among other things, this can include personal accomplishments, careers, and even our families.

The apostle Paul’s words in Philippians 3 need to guide my foray into the memories of the past as well as how I walk into the future. After outlining in verses 4-6 all of the reasons that he personally could be confident in himself, he renounces it all as rubbish and counts everything as loss compared to the “surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (verse 8). And in verses 13 and 14, Paul says this: “. . . forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ.”

I don’t think God expects us to renounce everything about our past. Families were originally God’s idea and are a wonderful blessing from him; and many of the memories in my past involve times of ministry with Christian friends and family members that hopefully made a difference for God’s kingdom. But I need to temper my nostalgic emotions with a reminder from Jesus in John 15:5 – “. . . apart from me you can do nothing”. It is God who gives me the ability to accomplish anything in this life, and he alone deserves the praise; and he alone should be the reason behind everything I do. That needs to be my guiding principle as I move into the future, even if it wasn’t always that way in the past.

Another lasting memory from my childhood comes to mind – a plaque that hung on our wall for years with these words from a poem by British missionary C.T. Studd: “Only one life, ‘twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.”