There is a certain kind of despair, I have noticed, that sets in when people begin to believe their best days are behind them. When every sentence starts with back when — back when the children were young, back when we were together, back when things were simpler.

And I understand it. Things don't stay the same. Children grow up and need us differently. Friends move away or go on ahead of us. We change. And even when we want to go back, we can't. That is simply not how life works.

But there is a cost to living back there. When we are clinging too tightly to what was — whether we are grieving it or romanticizing it — we are not fully present here. And here is all we actually have.

Over the past few days, we reflected on God's word through the prophet Isaiah to a people who had every reason to live in the past — either mourning the glory days before the exile or consumed by the trauma of what had happened to them. And God said something surprising: "Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing — do you not perceive it?"(Isaiah 43:18-19)

Do not miss the new thing because you are too focused on the old thing. The past — whether it was wonderful or terrible — does not get to own your future.

I have sat with people over the years who were so locked in the past — either aching for what was lost or unable to forgive what happened — that they had become almost unreachable by anything new. The grief was real. The loss was real. But somewhere along the way the past had stopped being something they carried and had become something that carried them.

And I have sat with others — some of them carrying losses just as heavy — who somehow remained open. Who grieved fully and still managed to stay curious about what came next. Who held the past with open hands rather than clenched fists. And in almost every case, something new did come. Not a replacement for what was lost. Something genuinely new.

I wonder what God might be wanting to do new in your life right now. And in mine. 

Prayer: Gracious God, loosen our grip on what was — the golden memories and the old wounds alike. Make us present to this moment, this day, this life we are actually living. We don't want to miss the new thing you are doing. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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