Gentle Reader,
Do not remember the former things
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.– Isaiah 43:18-19 (NRSV)
I have one semester of ancient Hebrew. Honestly I wish I had more. Ancient Greek, too. But when I took that one class, I quickly understood that I was not up to the challenge of becoming proficient in reading (let alone pronouncing) ancient Hebrew on top of the rest of my coursework. I know just enough, can read just enough, to know that I need a lot of help. So anytime you see a Hebrew or Greek word here, as you will in a moment, know that I’ve looked it up.
Today’s word? בִּין, bîyn, (pronounced like bean): understand, discern, observe, mark, give heed to. This word touches on concepts like attentiveness and learning.
Is God telling the ancient Jewish people then and us today to not learn from the past?
I love history. It’s just stories about people, and for my all my introvertedness, I find people highly interesting. Plus, I truly believe that if we don’t come to grips with history, we will repeat it. We can see that now as members of both extreme right-wing and extreme left-wing political movements vie for dominance around the globe. It’s all just a little too similar to what the 1920s looked like. Generally speaking, we have chosen to not learn from the past. We keep choosing the path of fear and stubbornness instead. Lord, have mercy. May we wake up and make different choices, by Your grace.
So no, God is not telling anyone that they should walk blindly into a future that is uninformed by the story of the past. There is real danger in not knowing or understanding history.
There is also danger in being so enamored with history that you’re incapable of actually living in the present. Whether you look back through rose-colored or the darkest of black lenses, if all you’re doing is looking back there’s no way you can move forward. You miss the beauty and the joy of right now as you pine for or remain stuck in mourning over what lies behind.
Emotions are complicated and there’s no one-size-fits-all way to work through them. The past leaves marks on our hearts. I still have moments when I feel the ache of missing the teenagers with whom I spent four years in youth ministry. I cherish the memories I have with them. But if all I did was replay them on a loop each day, I would in effect be rejecting the people that I am privileged to know now – a whole congregation whose members span just born to nearly a hundred years old. I would be rejecting the chance to love these people as God loves them, and for them to love me. It would be no real life at all. Just a shadowy existence in a mental prison.
That mental prison is all to real. It was for the ancient Jewish people, who would return from exile to find their beautiful, famous Temple a heap of rubble. No reconstruction would ever look or feel quite right. The pain of that stopped them from restoring their place of worship and their city for awhile. God used the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, the priest Ezra, and the administrator Nehemiah to prod the people out of sitting in that pain. God wanted them to live. Right here, right now. Yes, it would be different. But different doesn’t mean bad. It just means different. And with God, the wrinkles and pains of the different slowly unfold into something like the whitest, most comfortable, warm, soft blanket lovingly draped across your shoulders on a cool day. Different is okay. Different is even holy.
Learn from the past, but don’t live there. Your address has changed.
GRACE AND PEACE ALONG THE WAY,
MARIE
Image Courtesy of Owen Yin