Chapter One
PURPOSE and POWER
If you accept the idea that we live out our earthly lives on a timeline,
then this very moment-right now-is already part of the past. I hope
you enjoyed it, because it's already gone by. You're further down the
line than when you began this paragraph.
One philosopher pictured the passing succession of life's moments
like a sizzling stick of dynamite, declaring, "The essence of nowness runs
like fire along the fuse of time."
Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst! Look out. There it goes!
How fast is the fuse burning? C. S. Lewis described the future as
"something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour,
whatever he does, whoever he is."
Yes, it may seem as if time has slowed to a crawl as you sit passively
in a chair or propped up in bed reading this book, but at this very
moment your timeline is on fire-racing down the seconds, minutes, and
hours toward its inevitable conclusion.
Before the advent of dynamite fuses, thoughtful men and women
sought to capture the fleeting nature of time with other metaphors. Plato
observed, "It is as if we were floating on a river, carried by the current
past the manifold of events which is spread out timelessly on the bank."
The apostle James was perhaps sitting by a river on a misty morning
when he wrote, "You're nothing but a wisp of fog, catching a brief bit
of sun before disappearing."
That's a picture of the brevity of life as a whole, but it's also a snap-shot
of this very moment in time: a bit of fog, a flash of sun, and it's
gone.
A melancholy thought? Well, yes and no. That's just the nature of
things. We all know that life is racing by. Many of us are reminded anew
every time we look in the mirror. But because we serve a God who is
at once beyond time and outside of time, we can have confidence that
the significance of our lives-in God's hands, according to his power and
his sovereignty-can soar beyond all comprehension.
Peter reminds us: "Do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With
the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a
day." In other words, a thousand years passing can register in heaven like
the passing of the sun across the sky, from sunrise to sunset. But it also
means that a single day in God's hands can have a thousand years' worth of
significance. Little is much when God is in it, and every moment counts.
God may not freeze-frame the sun and moon for us as he did for Joshua,
but he can achieve precisely the same effect by expanding the reach and
impact of each hour and moment of our lives.
But what of the moments gone by? What of the seasons we have
already lived? Are they lost to us? It depends on our perspective. No, we
cannot live them again, as much as we might like to (or shudder at the
prospect). But remember, God is the Lord of our entire timelines. At the
same "moment" he hovers over our present, he also walks in our past and
goes before us into our futures. As David writes, "You go before me and
follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head."
In this present moment, I walk with God step-by-step, enjoying his
companionship. He has told me in no uncertain terms that the future is
his concern, and although I may plan, dream, and prepare as best I can, I
am not to worry (see Matthew 6:25-34; Luke 12:22-31). And my past?
Ah . glorious truth!
You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful
nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with
Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the
charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.
"Come now, let's settle this," says the Lord. "Though your sins
are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they
are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool."
God has wiped the slate clean of all our sin, blotting out all our betrayals
and failures and selfish preoccupations, taking it all upon himself, releasing
us from its penalty, and crying out on the cross to men, angels, and
devils, "Telestoi!" It is finished!
Yes, he has taken away our sins, but he has not taken away the past.
And though he will protect us from reliving the guilt and shame and
regret of poorly invested days, he also has much to teach us from the past
as we walk out the remaining quarter inches of our timelines. God possesses
our past, just as he possesses our present and our future. In fact, if
we do some looking back under his guidance, we will see things we've
never seen before, truths that may directly apply to our present and our
future.
Far from being a loss to us, the past seasons of our lives are often
the means of our deliverance in the present and the very preparation we
need to face the future. If you find yourself locked up, shut down, and
paralyzed from taking action, the answer to the riddle may very well lie
in your past.
What am I suggesting? Just this: I believe that God has left life-transforming
secrets on the trail behind us. Your back trail-or mine. If
you've ever read a Western by Louis L'Amour, you know that when his
heroes traverse an unfamiliar stretch of wilderness, they will frequently
stop their horses, turn around in the saddle, and study the trail behind
them. Why? Because the land they just passed through doesn't look the
same when viewed from the opposite
direction. And if they ever have to find
their way back, the terrain will seem
unfamiliar unless they've seen the lay of
the land, looking the other way.
It's the same with our lives. When
the Holy Spirit shows us our back trails,
we'll find landmarks and vistas we never
even glanced at the first time through. The landscape appears different
when we're looking back from the present.
I believe that God leaves treasure on our back trails.
GEMS IN THE DUST
A friend of mine recently shared a childhood memory of playing with
his cousins out in an old apple orchard in southern Oregon. The boys
were scuttling around in the dust when the eldest cousin suddenly bent
down and picked up a twenty-dollar gold piece. Can you imagine that?
How long had that gold coin been lying there, awaiting discovery? Very
possibly since those gnarly old apple trees were seedlings.
What would it be like to find a gold coin or some precious stones
along the path of life? A ruby, glinting blood red in the sun. A perfectly
cut sapphire, blue fire flashing out of every facet. A five-carat diamond,
catching daylight and throwing it back in a rainbow prism. Why should
such things surprise us? We are sons and daughters of the Great King.
Loving Father that he is, he wants us to live well. And no matter what
you might think of your past life, the God who loves you has scattered
priceless jewels of wisdom along the path behind you. Yes, there may be
some bitterly unhappy memories back there and some dark passages you
would rather forget. But what has God been doing while you've been
living your life forward? He has gone behind you, and he has left treasure
in the dust.
So, even if the past seems like just a bunch of dust in your memory,
look for the gems. You can apply the power of nurtured memories to shape
your future. I'm talking about the healthy sorting of memories-culling,
and then discarding, the warped impact
of the negative past; rediscovering, and
then focusing on, the positive elements
that have made you who you are.
Yes, we've all had negative experiences
in the past. The question is whether we will allow those negatives
to permanently eclipse our positive heritage. By reflecting on the positives,
we can bless and redeem the past. By reclaiming our positive memories,
strewn as they are in the dust of the timeline behind us, we can
recapture their power to strengthen us for the timeline yet ahead.
I learned this lesson-or I should say was reminded of it-in the
company of a three-year-old.
* * *
My grandson and I had spent the entire day together. Oh, it was a great
adventure, and now we had come to the best part: Poppa and his buddy
curled up on the couch together to watch a movie-and loving every
wonderful minute of it. On this occasion, we'd just finished off the evening
meal with a chocolate-covered ice cream bar. We licked our fingers,
smacked our lips, and headed for the main feature: Disney's animated
classic The Lion King.
As we settled into the couch, I noticed that my little buddy seemed
to crowd especially close to my side and nestle under my arm. I said,
"This must be a pretty scary movie, huh, buddy?"
All of a sudden a new personality emerged. His eyes lit up and
doubled in size. His voice took on a sense of determined focus, and his
hands and arms gestured with all the intensity a three-year-old can
muster.
"Scar is a baaaaad lion!" He paused for a moment and then added,
"And I'm gonna get my shaawtguun and shoot him when he shows up."
He scrambled for the ever-present pile of toys, looking for whatever
it was he called his "shaawtguun." Unable to find anything that resembled
one, he settled for a plastic golf club. The movie began.
You know the story. The kingdom around Pride Rock, ruled by
the benevolent Mufasa, is blessed with abundant grass, sparkling streams,
and healthy animals. The music is sweet. All is well. But Scar, the usurper,
carries out his evil plot and murders Mufasa. Then he rids the kingdom
of the young heir to the throne, Simba, by shaming him into believing
that Mufasa's death was the young cub's fault. Believing himself to be a
guilty prodigal, Simba wanders hopelessly into the far reaches of the
wilderness.
And it gets worse. Scar's wicked tyranny systematically sucks the life
out of the pridelands, and the kingdom devolves into misery. The once
beautiful landscape is reduced to ashes. The water stagnates, the grass
disappears, evil triumphs, and depression reigns.
And then . Simba comes to his senses. The entire story turns on
a single scene, a scene that centers on just one word, one of the most
powerful words in our language.
Remember.
On a starlit evening, Simba finds himself beside a pool of water. A
refreshing pool of reflection and recollection. The pool of memory
becomes something of an altar of remembrance, and the real Simba
begins to emerge. Now full grown, but still in exile in the wilderness,
the young lion has been encouraged by his childhood friend Nala to
return and restore the kingdom to its former glory. But Simba refuses to
return. Wallowing in the deep disappointment of his own past and its
false guilt, he seems hopelessly lost.
In his disorientation, all he can do is stare into the pool at his own
reflection. And then, in his reflection, he sees something larger than
himself. Behind and above him, the pool reflects the stars sparkling in
the dark. Voices from the past whisper on the wind, the familiar voices
of the great lion kings of the past, repeatedly intoning one simple message
to the young lion:
Remember who you are .
Remember who you are .
Remember .
Deeply moved, Simba begins to awaken to reality. He remembers
who he is. He is Mufasa's cub, his father's son, heir to the throne. He
begins to shed the dark side of his disappointing past and sees the brighter
side of events that have shaped him. Starting, however hesitantly, to see
the noble side of his father in himself,he hears his father's voice call out,
"You have forgotten who you are, because you have forgotten me."
What is happening to Simba? It is the very same process that many
of us need to experience.
At the pool of memory, Simba begins to realize that he is not just
part of a meaningless animal herd wandering in a wilderness of forgetfulness.
He has an identity. He is part of something larger than himself,
standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before. A mantle has
been passed to him, a just and righteous mantle.
Remembering transforms him from
the inside out. Memory takes hold, and
character emerges as the direction becomes
clear. Simba resolves to return to Pride
Rock and take back both his life and his
rightful place. After defeating the tyrant
Scar,he rebuilds the kingdom and restores
the environment. The music is sweet again.
All is well, and all because he remembered.
Frederick Buechner, one of my
favorite writers, helps us to sort our memories when he writes, "I am
inclined to believe that God's chief purpose in giving us memory is to
enable us to go back in time so that if we didn't play those roles right
the first time round, we can still have another go at it now Through
the power that memory gives us of thinking, feeling, imagining our way
back through time we can . [remove the power of the past] to hurt us
and other people."
Not only can we heal the wounds of the past, but we can harness
the strengthening nature of the past to our own good and the good of
those around us. By remembering, we can reform. By reflecting, we can
bless the past. By reclaiming our positive memories, we can inherit their
power to strengthen us for the future.
Memory is the lifeblood of character and identity. Forgetfulness is
destructive. Remembering who we are is one of the most important
things we can do as human beings.
THE YELLOW FORMICA TABLE
For Simba, it was a reflecting pool. For me, it was a yellow Formica
table.
As I sat on the couch with my grandson as the closing credits rolled
on the screen, my mind drifted toward my own past. The movie may
have been over, but the impact of the evening on me was not. As my
little grandson drowsed against my side, my mind scrolled through a
recollection of my own-a memory more than half a century old.
When I was a little boy, I, too, spent a special day with my grandpa,
William Weber. That day was also something of a great adventure, and
it, too, had included the finest of desserts after dinner-one of my
grandpa's famous ice cream and Pepsi floats.
Fifty years ago, there was no Lion King. In fact, there was no home
video. Before television had become popular enough to start eroding the
foundations of family life in America, my grandparents practiced an
evening ritual of playing table games. As it turned out, that particular
night, with a simple table game for our entertainment, would leave a
permanent mark on my memory and my life. It was a memory that
would also shape my future, because nearly twenty years later, the simple
recollection of that night would save my career.
It's a story I've told many times, but I offer no apologies for repeating
it here. Life-shaping memories are made to be told and retold.
Grandpa and Grandma and I were seated in the kitchen nook, at
the old, yellow Formica table, playing Parcheesi. To my frustration, I had
fallen well behind in the game, and I was becoming desperate. The last
thing a scruffy little boy would ever want
to do is lose to his own grandma. So I
cheated. And I got caught.
The game stopped. So did the chatter.
My grandma turned her eyes to my
grandpa, and the mood in the kitchen
turned very serious. I felt my face getting hot. Grandpa dropped his
glasses down to the tip of his nose, and he looked directly into my eyes.
"Stu," he said, "you're a Weber boy. And Weber boys don't lie, cheat, or
steal."
I loved my grandpa, and I knew he loved me. His blue eyes sparkled,
even into his eighties. He was a practical, straightforward man,
and he taught me how to work with purpose. He was also a fun-loving
man who taught me to laugh. I would never have intentionally disappointed
him.
That night, he gave me something to live up to. I was on my way
to becoming a cheater, but Grandpa gave me a vision for a better future.
I had to decide. What kind of boy would I be? What kind of man would
I become? Would I be a person of integrity, or would I drift, along with
much of humanity, into a swamp of dishonesty, shading the truth, cutting
corners, and trimming the facts to suit the needs of the moment?
(Continues.)
