LIVING LOOKING BACK

There’s a saying that goes, if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, then you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting.

I’ve heard it said, that we should allow our past to serve as a propeller on our life ship, to thrust us towards our new land. We must be mindful not to live in the past for that can prove to be harmful and even dangerous at times. 

What do I mean by living in the past? When we constantly refer to how things used to be, that’s living in the past. Remembering the past, is certainly not a sin, but constantly desiring to return to it could be.

When we insist on reliving again and again, the experiences of the past, we delay the coming glory of the new day ahead. 

There is an allegory that tells the story of how a man, his wife and their two daughters were living in an unhealthy environment for their family. Though they were in a toxic situation, they continued to stay. They kept repeating the same old cycle over and over again. Finally, one day, something happened that was so horrific they had to leave. They were being forced out. Sometimes we leave a situation with our head, but not with our heart. 

This was the case for the man’s wife. As they were leaving, she kept remembering how things used to be before all the confusion came in. She relived the past so often, that she actually stopped moving forward. Then she turned around to head back. When she did, she became this huge pile of salt. Yes salt! Hard, unchanging and unaffected by some obvious deterrents. 

The moral of the story is, if I get stuck living looking back in my past I’ll never get to what’s waiting for me up ahead.  You should only look back, to remember how far you’ve come.

This is a Thompson Truth.