Where Does Remembering the Past Take Us
1 Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name;
make known among the nations what he has done.
2 Sing to him, sing praise to him;
tell of all his wonderful acts.
3 Glory in his holy name;
let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.
4 Look to the Lord and his strength;
seek his face always.
5 Remember the wonders he has done,
his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,
6 you his servants, the descendants of Abraham,
his chosen ones, the children of Jacob.
7 He is the Lord our God;
his judgments are in all the earth.
I am only giving the beginning verses of Psalm 105. You can use the link to find the whole Psalm – 45 verses that go through a small portion of the life of God’s people. They show something of the life of Israel under God’s leading. The faithfulness of God, as we spoke of this past Sunday in our worship. And the faithfulness of God is shown in the leading of the people, or from another perspective, the people following God.
We can look back and find several responses to what we see in the past. We can look back and lament the ways in which we have suffered. Thinking that our life has been hard and that we are living in unfair situations.
We can look back and see God acting and the good that has come in life and think that life is just about sitting back and letting God take us somewhere. We are just passengers to the end God is taking us. Maybe the image of a bus driver or a pilot.
Or we can look back at the events of life, see God walking with us, and seeing that we are trying to walk with God. The events of Psalm 105 show the people on the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. A journey where God is leading and protecting; God is providing for them for food, clothing and shelter. But also, a journey where they must get up from their homes and leave with God to go to a new place. They must trust that God is leading them to something better. A trust that has its ups and downs along the way. But a trust that will be there in the end, although a generation later under Joshua leading them into the land.
This is a week where we often reflect on the past, and where we look to the future. We look back and see God having been with us in our lives. We see the ways we have followed and the ways we have gone our own ways. We see our successes and failures. But with God we see his faithfulness amid our struggles with faith.
We can look forward knowing that God will remain faithful. We can look forward with a renewed effort to follow well and keep our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith (Hebrews 12.2).
We have been called to follow. A call which we will see again this coming week as we will look at the calling of disciples in Matthew 4. An invitation to be disciples, but an invitation that will ask us to get up and go to a new place of being. A new way of being. Following deeper, closer, more fully. We are invited to follow Christ into the New Year, as part of his New Creation.