Healing Rays of Righteousness

Read Philippians 3:10-14

The Christian life is a journey, a process of growth in which I “press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”  We have been loved, saved, and reconciled into a new relationship with Christ.  We claim that Christ has made us new creatures, but every day we humbly confess that we have not yet fully become what Christ wants us to be. 

The beginning of a new year offers us a time to reflect on our past year, enjoying our accomplishments, and remembering God’s blessings in our life.  But most likely we will also remember and regret our painful mistakes, failures, and unloving behaviors. 

If asked whether or not we always did our best, most of us would probably ashamedly answer, “No, I did not.”  If asked whether or not any of our conversations and actions caused unnecessary pain, again most of us would sadly answer, “Probably so.”

Mistakes and regrets of the past can and often do become heavy baggage for us.  And the baggage is real and cannot be easily dismissed, for it represents the consequence of mistaken judgment and unwise decisions that have left painful wounds and sometimes deep scars in relationships.

There always seems to be something about the past that troubles us, even if it is nothing more than the nagging belief that we could do better if given another chance.

Many years ago, Louisa Fletcher Tarkington, wrote a perceptive poem entitled, “The Land of Beginning Again.”  It begins and ends with a verse which gives voice to the regret we feel when we realize what we’ve done or haven’t done.

•             I wish there were some wonderful place
•             Called the land of beginning again
•             Where all our mistakes,
•             And all our heartaches,
•             And all of our poor selfish grief,
•             Could be dropped like a shabby
•             Old coat at the door,
•             And never be put on again.

I think that being Christian in relationship with God through Jesus Christ, makes us uniquely equipped to leave the past behind.  The baggage of our past that continues to drag us back, weigh us down, and make us stumble, is our sense of failure, our guilt over past sin, our pain from past hurts.  And I’m thinking that this inability to leave the past behind contradicts everything we profess to believe about the forgiving, healing, redeeming power of Christ.    

I’m thinking that this is what the apostle Paul was referencing when he wrote, “But one thing I do; Forgetting (forgiving) 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.”

There is great value in looking back.  We look back to learn.  We look back to affirm the places, faces, and circumstances from where we have come, to remember what and who has shaped us.  There is a time to look back if it carries with it a positive purpose.

Paul is urging us not to look back in ways that keep us from going forward, in ways that make us a prisoner of our past mistakes and sins, in ways that do not allow for healing of old hurts and painful memories.

The past is always with us with its potential to rob us of freedom, making us heavy-hearted, preventing us from being able to use all our spiritual energy and gifts for coping with the new day and moving with joyous anticipation into the new year.

However, the Bible is filled with the idea of forgiveness and beginning life over again.  The possibility of new beginnings is God’s good news to us, individually and corporately. 

And so I say, whatever loose ends of mistakes and unloving behaviors that may be staking you from your past, God can help you gather them into confession and new beginnings of pressing on “toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called (you) heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Forgiveness is for the asking.  Instead of fretting, find forgiveness, and move forward through God’s open door of opportunity and excellence into the new year of 2019.

“Healing Rays of Righteousness” – January 9, 2019