Get Your Head Out of Your… Past

Image and post by Rev. Michael Beck

Moses is leading the people through the desert. They are growing as a nation. YHWH is literally providing manna from heaven every day.

They grow weary with living one day at a time, trusting God for daily provision. They start to complain and idealize the past. “Oh how we feasted back there!” They forget the slavery, bricks without straw, children thrown in the Nile, battered bodies buried in the sand.

Human beings have a proclivity towards nostalgia. We create a golden image of some idyllic past that is usually not based in reality. It’s easier to go back to the slavery we know, then press forward into the future we don’t fully understand.

Moses is over it! “Get your head out of your past people!” We see this in the recovery community every day. People with a length of sobriety go backwards and relapse. We call this a reservation. We slack up on enlarging our spiritual life. We abandon the simple spiritual tools we’ve learned. We get tired of living one day at a time. We idealize our partying days.

This same phenomenon happens in church revitalizations. God is doing miraculous things every day. We are growing more and more. A new future is on the horizon. Then the community starts to long for Egypt. “Can we go back to the way it used to be?” “We remember when the pastor did this.” “Things were so great when…”

If a team of leaders are not careful, they will cave to the pressure of going backwards. We will “people please” the congregation into an early death. Moses acts decisively. God distributes a measure of his spirit amongst a small team. They press forward towards the promised land, even as some decide to go back to Egypt.

Are we aware and grateful of God’s miraculous provision in our lives? Are we living one day at a time, trusting God? Is our head stuck up our past, have we become part of the back to Egypt committee?

Would you read the Bible Plan, The One Year ® Bible, with me? https://bible.com/…/1f08370910f6d0c9b3c18e074b622423

In Christ,
Rev. Elyse Milligan Nielsen