What Lies Behind

I forget what lies behind...St. Paul

 

Good memories should encourage us. Bad memories should inspire us. St. Paul was speaking of good and bad memories when he said he forgot what was behind him. He had the memory of being a faithful Jew. He also had the memory of persecuting the Way. He gave his approval to St. Stephen's stoning. His example is vital to our walking with Christ. So often we hang up on our past , good or bad. Maybe we can't let something go or can't forgive someone.(even ourselves)  Or maybe a dream we had prayed for never came true. We blame others, and often, deep down, we blame God. Paul says to forget what lies behind. God is bigger than our memories. His love is a crazy love! He is not against us is any form or fashion. He wants us to move on, to learn, to forgive, to be free to serve Him and others in a way that fills us with even more life. He wants us to be fully alive! St. Paul was fully alive. Even with all of his anxiety, concerns for his "children" in the faith, his imprisonments, his beatings, shipwrecks, arguments with fellow disciples, tangles with Satan, St. Paul lived! And here is the most important part, "It is not that I have reached it yet, or have already finished my course; but I am racing to grasp the prize if possible, since I have been grasped by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not think of myself as having reached the finish line. I give NO thought to what lies behind but push on to what is ahead. My entire attention is on the finish line as I run toward the prize to which God calls me---life on high in Jesus Christ."  Paul to the Philippians, chapter 3.

 

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