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Breaking Away from Our Past
From Timeless Grace Gems
J.R. Miller, December 1902
From Timeless Grace Gems
J.R. Miller, December 1902
"But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:13-14
We have here Paul's plan of life — progress by forgetting, by letting go the things that are past. This is such a wise theory of life that we may profitably study it a few minutes this morning.
"Forgetting what is behind." There are some things we would like to forget. Probably most of us have done things this year we would much like . . .
to leave behind,
to blot out from memory,
to cut altogether loose from,
to bury in oblivion.
We may have spoken words which we would eagerly recall — words which hurt tender hearts, or which left a stain where they fell, or which misdirected a trusting life. Or it may have been a silence over which we grieve — the word that was not spoken. We may have done things we would gladly forget. Even when sins are forgiven, they leave their marks. They stay in the memory.
Looking back on the year, we must know of things in our lives we wish we might forget, but cannot.
Someone tells of a picture of a man in agony, on his knees, praying that God would turn back the hands on the dial of time, and give him again hours that were past. "O God!" he cried, "turn back your universe and give me yesterday." But the prayer could not be granted. Even God cannot turn back the hands of the clock, that we may have any day over again. But one thing God will do — we may bring to him all the mistakes, the follies, the sins — and he will forgive us, and then use even these poor broken things for good.
A traveler tells of finding beside the sea, at a place where many ships were dashed upon the rocks — a beautiful house built altogether of pieces of wreckage gathered from the shore. That is about the best many of us can do. We have little else to bring to God but wreckage — disobediences, broken commandments, mistakes, sins. Yet it is a wonderful thought that even with such materials, if we are truly penitent and repentant, our Master will work, helping us to build beauty in our lives. Sins forgiven become lessons for us. Out of a past full of failures we may make a future full of strength and beauty — through the grace of Christ. We cannot forget our sins, but we may be wiser and better for them.
Then there are things in our lives which we would not want to forget. George Eliot wrote, "I desire no future that will break the ties of the past." Memory is a wonderful treasure house. It keeps for us in store the sweet things, the joys, the happy experiences, of all our days, so that when we will we may live them over again.
There are sacred hours and holy days in every good life, the remembrance of which it would be sacrilege to have blotted out. We would not forget the sweet friendships which have woven their threads of gold and silver into this year's web. We would not forget . . .
the lessons we have learned,
the beautiful things we have seen,
the blessings that have come into our lives.
Everyone has red-letter days that stand out in the calendar as days never to be forgotten.
Paul does not mean that he absolutely forgot everything in the past.
He never forgot the days when he was a persecutor — the memory of his violent opposition to Christ in years past stirred him to the last to more earnest and hearty devotion to his Redeemer, to burn out the old shame in flames of love and service.
He never forgot his friends. His epistles are full of grateful mentions of those who in days gone had shown him kindness.
He never forgot the goodness of God. His life was one long anthem of joy. Paul does not mean any such forgetting as this.
Yet there is a forgetting which is part of every one's duty. "Forgetting what is behind." We are about at the ending of the year. There are many things that we should not carry out of this old year into a new.
When a family is relocating from one house to another, especially if they have been quite a while in the old house, there are likely to be many things that they would better leave behind, either having an auction or a bonfire. Just so, there is rubbish in most of our lives that we should get rid of before we enter the New Year's paths.
A friend of mine has written a little book which she calls "The Evolution of a Girl's Ideal." The text of the book is a sentence which the author says she found somewhere a good while ago — "The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment." Most people believe that the way of life is by acquisition, by getting things, by adding to their possessions. The way to grow rich is to keep all you have and continue to add to your wealth — saving and accumulating.
By and by, if we are wise, we learn that it is by abandonment, by giving up things, by leaving things behind, by growing away from things and ideals, that we really grow.
So Miss Laughlin tells us the story of the girl's life in illustration of her text: "The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment." The little girl lives in her dolls for a while. Then she gives up her dolls for her school-girl friendships. For a time these fill her life. If she could not see these friends daily, two or three times a day, life was blank, empty, intolerable. Then "affairs of the heart come in" — before the girl is ten. In two or three years the boys are supplanted by clothes — these again by a more serious love affair, with its dreams, which, too, collapse and fall to nothing, by and by. So the story goes on to the end — one hope after another cherished, then given up and left behind, always for something better and more substantial. Thus was the truth of the writer's text illustrated and proved, "The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment."
Paul states the same truth when he says, "When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child; now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things." Childhood is very sweet and beautiful, but who would want to stay a child always?
Thus we begin to catch hints of the meaning of the apostle when he says he forgets things behind and presses on to things before. It is the law of life.
The blossom is not lost when it is left behind by the coming of the fruit.
The boy is not sorry when he feels himself growing into manhood. He seems to be leaving much behind, much that is winning and attractive. Perhaps his mother grieves as she sees him lose one by one the things she has always liked — his curls, his boyish ways, his delicate features — the qualities that kept him a child, and taking on elements of strength, the marks of manhood. But if he remained always a boy, a child with curls and dainty tastes, what a pitiful failure his life would be! He can press to the goal of perfection only by putting away, leaving behind, passing by — the sweetness, the simplicity, the innocence of boyhood.
The same principle runs all through life. Manhood is stern, strong, and heroic. It would seem that childhood is more beautiful. But who regrets passing to man's ruggedness and man's hard tasks? Growing up in Nazareth was easier for Jesus than what came after; but when he left the carpenter shop and went to the Jordan to be baptized, thence to the wilderness to be tried, and thence started on the way to his cross — do you think he was sorry?
He forgot the easy, pleasant things which were behind, and with joy entered upon the harder way before him, as he pressed toward the goal.