My buddy, Ken, and I recently took a trip back through time.
Having grown up next door to one another in the '50's and '60's, then having attended the same college, and having remained friends ever since, we had often talked about going back to our old stompin' grounds together. In October, we finally did it. We visited the small town, Pennsylvania, street on which we grew up, and even got to tour Ken's family's house - now occupied by the son and grandson of another neighbor. We poked around in the woods behind our houses, where we had so many adventures together. Walked into town, where the buildings are the same although the stores are different. Basically walked all over town and reminisced. Remember sledding here on this hill? And the Memorial Day parades, and the pet shows up here in the center of town? Remember the fire that nearly burned my house down, and how you saved it - and me? Boy Scouts? The dentist whose name was Scull? This old tree? The one that's gone? The one that fell on both our houses during Hurricane Hazel?
So many memories we share, and the recalling of them strengthened the bonds of friendship between us.
Reflecting on what we have often thought of as our "idyllic" upbringing, I realize there is much to commend it and much to be thankful for. On the other hand, revisiting our haunts made me aware that it wasn't all great, and some of it I'd rather forget. Ken's dad was fond of saying, "Boys will be boys." I think maybe more to the point, "Boys will be sinners." Reflecting on some of our shenanigans, I was faced with the reality that sin played a big role in both our motivations and responses, and in the influences to which we subjected ourselves. I think the past wasn't so idyllic after all.
St. John had it right when he said, "Do not love the world, or the things in the world. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, are not of the Father, but of the world." I recently reviewed a verse in Ecclesiastes 5:20, "He will not much remember the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart." This made me realize that my relationship with God is to be such a "present" thing that the joy of it delivers me from idolizing a past I cannot recover, nor mourning because it is irretrievable.
The joy of the Lord's fellowship thus delivers me from both "past-worship" and from bitterness with present realities. In a sense, the present will always fall short of the past, because I tend to fantasize about the past, remembering only the best of it, and forgetting much of its pain.
It's kind of like married men who fantasize about Victoria's Secret models - people with whom they are not, nor ever will be, in touch. They can conveniently overlay all kinds of preferred personality characteristics on them, such that - in their minds - these women are always cheerful, always willing, always affiming, never tired, moody, grumpy or imperfect in any way. How can any wife hope to compete with such a fantasy?
So it is with the past. Its reality was much closer to that of the present than we'd like to admit. I believe it's all tied to our tendency to be discontented, and to focus on ourselves, rather than to be both thankful and worshipful toward God Himself - who deigns to be the center of our universe, and rightly so.
