And the one seated on the throne said: “Look! I am making all things new!” Then he said to me, “Write it down, because these words are reliable and true.”
Revelation 21:5 NET
As I took the soft, warm sheets and underwear out of the dryer this cold winter morning, I thought about our foremothers and the “good old days.” Were those days really so good?
I thought about my mother when we lived in North Dakota during my middle school days. We did not have a dryer. In the winter, when the clothes came out of the last rinse, they went out on the clothesline to be freeze-dried. And the generations before that had to carry water into the house, heat it over an open fire, and wash and wring the clothes by hand. Or go down to the river to pound out the dirt. Forget the “good old days”!
Now don’t get me wrong – everything isn’t so great now either. Every day the TV, the radio, or the newspapers and news magazines bring us stories and pictures of wars, fires, natural disasters, famines caused by warring factions, murders, unfaithfulness to spouses and other family members, destitute widows and orphans, corruption in government, labor unrest, homelessness, and the struggle to survive. Added to this is my very long list of friends and acquaintances who are suffering from a variety of ailments, some fatal, and those who are grieving from losses. The list goes on and on.
Scripture has something to say about remembering and forgetting. God, through Isaiah, tells us to forget former things and not dwell on the past. Why? Because, “I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19 NIV).
Then God, again through Isaiah, tells us to remember past events. Again, Why? Because “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me” (Isaiah 46:9 NIV).
That is something to remember – God has led in the past. Peter tells us we are nearsighted and blind if we forget that we “have been cleansed from [our] past sins” (2 Peter 1:9. NIV).
I think the best thing about forgetting the past is that, as today’s text says, we can look to the future. Praise the Lord! We remember He has led us in the past, but a better future awaits!
From Color my World with Love, Copyright © 2020 by General Conference Women’s Ministries Department