Longing for the Past

Have you ever yearned for a time where you could go back and it could 'be like it was?' I have imagined something like that for the longest time. For a good while, my relationship with God has been somewhat strained. Not by anything that has happened to me or any other circumstance, but because of my laziness. There used to be a time where I was absolutely loving studying the Bible and praying constantly and really being able to get something out of the church sermons. I felt really in touch with Him and a lot of the problems I have been dealing with now were not even on the horizon. But my laziness got the best of me and it has been a long struggle to get back to where I was and I am nowhere close. My thought about that is, I don't need to be striving to get back to where I was, and that if God wants me there He will lead me there. Don't get me wrong, this is not a fatalistic approach toward my faith. This is more of an attidude that says, "Father, I have been away from You for quite some time. I don't know what is in store for me, but I do not want it to look like my life over the past few years. I want it to be one where I am constantly trying to follow you, praying, reading the Word, loving my family. I know that I will never have a trouble free life, but I want that trouble that I do experience to be something that pushes me to follow even harder after you."


So, after that long explanation, let's get to the topic. I don't think that we need to sit around waiting for the past to catch up with us so we can get back to life like it was. Living in the past prevents us from being prepared to live for the future. Dwelling on the past and longing for it puts us into a funk. That funk is something that really messes with our lives and minds. All of us have known someone who has been stuck in the past. They live to tell people of their past accomplishments and try to recreate the situations that they were in. People like that try to be in a position where they can feel like they used to. They know that there will never be a time where their lives will fully mirror what the past was but every time they get that feeling, they count it as a big accomplishment and milestone in their lives. I have definitely been that person.



I have felt this very much throughout my short life. I have been trying to recreat the past and live in it. I have been trying to ge tthe feeling back that I had when I was really close to God. Trying to read the same books, trying to study the same passages, pray the same things, have the same friends. Every time one of the pieces of my past fell into my future I felt like I had truly accomplished something. The problem is, what did that really accomplish? I had been so busy trying to live in the past, to be that same person that I have missed out on the things that matter and have missed out on new things that God was trying to teach me. It got me to a point where I was so overwhelmed I couldn't do anything. I don't want to live like that. I don't want to stay in the past and try to be that person. It's like I was asleep and dreaming of the past, hoping that I would find myself back at college my freashman year, or maybe on campus in January when no one else is there, just taking a walk. Trying to force myself to relive the past makes me incapable of being who I am in the present and who I am to be in the future. I pray that we become people who look to that time when we are to be with Christ, while living in the present like we are with Him.





On a side note, while I was writing this I was reading some of my old journals. I used to write poetry a lot, and not a lot had been seen. Reading this one again makes me think that I was writing that for me today to help shake me and make me move. I don't share this stuff a lot, but I was reading Ephesians and I think verse 5:14 said, "Awake, o sleeper, and rise from the dead, And Christ will shine on you." That is why I wrote this, now I can only hope and pray that we will all rise up and wake from our slumber. Tomorrow is a new day!











Arise O' Sleeper





Sleeper, arise from your deadly rest,



From your blind obedience to the prince of death.


Follow now the Son of the Eternal King,


And while on this earth His praises sing.


His Word will light your path, your way,


So that from the narrow you will ne'er stray.


This Christ, the Messiah, your Savior be,


The Son of God revealed you now see.


His gruesome death has brought us peace,


And given us a garment without crease.


Our winless strife with God now done,


Because of the price paid by His Son.


That blood now is our cleansing flow,


Awake O' Sleeper, arise and go.