“When I hear somebody sigh that
life is hard, I am tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what’?” –Sydney J. Harris
Israel escaped slavery in Egypt to
travel through a desert with Moses, but hunger caused them to complain, “We
used to have it so good in Egypt.”
They forgot about the backbreaking work and their routine beatings, because
at least they had meat and bread to eat (Exo. 16:3). Israel had no perspective of the promise land Moses was
taking them to, because they were living in a false rosy image of the past. Our minds can tend to work similarly:
we choose to remember the good parts of our pasts, but brush over the parts
that were bad. Maybe it’s a failed
relationship, or job that didn’t work out, and for whatever reason, we miss
what never really was. The lesson for Israel is true
for us: it’s hard to see the greater places we want to go if we're living
in the rosy images we paint of our pasts.
But I
focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies
ahead (Philippians 3:13, NLT).
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