Apples of Gold

 We have all seen the action movies featuring thrilling escape scenes where the good guy is ducking down in his well-equipped car to avoid the hailstorm of bullets flying his way. He is forced to drive full speed in reverse-using only his mirrors, as he flies around corners while avoiding numerous obstacles. Even after driving for decades, I still am not comfortable just backing up. My brain just doesn’t process the physics of it well. The risk that would arise by attempting to drive focusing on what you can see in your rearview mirror is untenable.

Our lives are not meant to be lived in reverse either. Somehow our memories tend to distort the past into a picture that more resembles an image from a fun house mirror than reality.  At times people remember things worse than reality-the focus is on the negative, and time seems to magnify seemingly insignificant seconds into towering monstrosities. More often though, the tendency is to remember the best times and allow the harder times to be locked away in a closet that we choose not to open. Israel provides us with a sobering example.

Soon the people began to complain about their hardship, and the LORD heard everything they said. Then the LORD’S anger blazed against them, and he sent a fire to rage among them, and he destroyed some of the people in the outskirts of the camp. Then the people screamed to Moses for help, and when he prayed to the LORD, the fire stopped. After that, the area was known as Taberah. Then the foreign rabble who were traveling with the Israelites began to crave the good things of Egypt. And the people of Israel also began to complain. Oh, for some meat! They exclaimed. We remember the fish we used to eat for free in Egypt. And we had all the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic we wanted. But now our appetites are gone. All we ever see is this manna! Numbers 11:1-6

 If you have read much of the biblical account of the Israelites slavery in Egypt you easily see the distorted picture they have allowed to take up residence in their memories. Pretty sure they were not sitting around filling up on delicacies while watching the sunset. Rather they were treated cruelly, beaten, pushed to do hard labor-until their bodies gave out. Let’s refresh our memories:

Then the LORD told him, I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries of distress because of their hard slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own fertile and spacious land. Exodus 3:7-8

The circumstances had improved radically but the complaints continued. How many times have people changed their location in an attempt to outrun their problems only to find their troubles followed them as closely as their own shadow? Moses had enough of this: 

For you have rejected the LORD, who is here among you, and you have whined to him, saying, Why did we ever leave Egypt? Numbers 11:20

I picture Moses saying this in a nasally voice with his hand on his hip. More likely he roared it in total frustration. After all, he had made the decision to give up a life of luxury in the palace in order to serve God wholeheartedly and part of that service was to rescue Israel from their difficulties. 

Although the grass often looks greener on the other side of the fence, it rarely is. Our perception doesn’t care if it is actually our reality. We might long for things that we have walked away from-things that God has delivered us from. Things we remember as far better than they were, things that had us enslaved. Things we complained about and longed for deliverance from; but we have allowed our faulty memories to be manipulated by the hand of  the enemy, shifting like the pictures in a kaleidoscope, until reality is transformed into fantasy and the trap is sprung. 

As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness. Proverbs 26:11

Don’t fall for the chicanery of the enemy. His attempt to hide the stench of our past by fogging it over with cheap air freshener, only leaves us with ruins that smell like cheap perfume.  

The past can affect us in another harmful way. When we look back on our foolishness and see it for what it is, the enemy tries to make it stick to us like a static charged sock clinging to a  thick towel upon removal from a hot dryer. Perhaps the stench of our past is all too real and the shame and blame keep us living our life with our eyes focused on the rearview mirror rather than what lies in front of us. Although we might not be tempted to return to our old ways we find ourselves dragging our past behind us like a heavy ball and chain.

Your confessed sins have been removed as far as east is from west. While it is important that we reflect on our poor choices and choose to do better; The guilt and shame, kicking ourselves for not making better decisions-keep our focus on what could have been, while we miss the opportunity to do better today. We are aiming for progress not perfection.

No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. Let all who are spiritually mature agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you. But we must hold on the progress we have already made. Philippians 3:13-16