Life is interesting in the rearview. It’s painful. It’s prideful. It’s critical. It’s confusing. It’s clear. It’s comforting. It’s humbling. It’s healing.
The rearview allows you to look back while still moving forward. It’s not the same as taking a standstill and completely facing backwards and becoming immobilized. The rearview allows us to learn from what is behind us while we press on to what lies ahead. However, we must be careful not to linger too long in our glances or we will end up in a collision with the future and will find ourselves blaming the past instead of our own lack to pay attention to the path that the Lord has presently placed us on.
I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.
Philippians 3:10-16
Paul kept a glance on the cross and the resurrection of Christ and because of this it kept him moving forward in order to honor and obey the leading of the One who had sealed him with the Holy Spirit with the promise of his own resurrection. He knew the One in whom He believed and He knew that He held the past, present, and future in His hands.
This past week my family served as missionaries in Boston as we helped put on a VBS week for a small church in the area. I had the privilege of teaching the Kindergarten through 3rd graders… and I poured as much into them as my time could allow. The morning we left a wave of heaviness washed over me. This wave lands on me after every lesson I teach. It’s the wave of doubt. I will begin to examine everything I said, or didn’t say, and fear will hit that I taught too much, not enough, or that taught wrong. Was I really being led by the Spirit? The what if’s come crashing down as I recall James 3:1,
Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
Trust me, every post I write, every book I publish, every lesson I teach is with fear and trembling with this verse on the forefront of my mind.
As I was glancing back in that rearview, the criticism and confusion hit me and then I remembered the resurrection and I remembered that my Jesus is more than able to take the seed I sowed in imperfection and make it perfect. I think to highly of myself if I think my delivery or my lack there of determines the eternity of anyone. Jesus is fully capable of cultivating the seed of His own Word and seeing it to completion. In the humbling we find healing and the voices of condemnation are cast out and this human heart is comforted.
Of course this rearview looking is not just contained to the teaching and preaching of the Word of God, but also to life in general. When cancer struck my Daddy he looked back in the rearview and wondered if this was God punishing him for not following a call into full time ministry when he and my mother were newly married. When he told me this I reminded him of the impact that he had made for the Lord as he loved us and my mother and his sons-in-law. He might not have ever pastored a formal congregation, but he pastored his family well.
I missed him so much on our trip. I missed my sister in law. Our day at the Old North Church and the Old North Bridge were the hardest.
Here at our day at the Old North Bridge where the “shot heard around the world” took place I was overwhelmed as was my husband… but I was able to hold it together until our next stop where I took the picture of the sign of the first settlement.
The rearview got me as I snapped this picture. My Daddy would have loved this experience. As I looked back in my rearview I saw all the trips he and my mother took us on growing up. Our vacations always centered around a history lesson. I wanted him to be there beside me so bad on this trip that he had talked about he and my mother going on with us when the new chemo treatments helped him feel better again.
Then here at the Old North Church was a memorial with dog tags representing every soldier that had lost their life in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of these soldiers just might have been one that our Phillis touched in her life. How we would have loved to have her standing there as we took this picture.
As I glanced back in the rearview and the pain hit me I also saw in that rearview the resurrection of our Lord, and I was reminded that my Daddy and Phillis didn’t need to be in the picture because quite possibility they might be having a first hand conversation with those who were there as they wait for us to join them in their resurrection.
Yes, life is definitely interesting in the rearview. It is indeed painful, prideful, critical, and confusing. Yet it is also clear, comforting, humbling, and healing when we keep it at a glance as we continue to press forward.
The rearview can teach us how to better pay attention in our present as we continue moving into our future. One of the most important lessons my Daddy taught me and my husband also teaches our girls about driving in a vehicle is to constantly glance to see what’s going on in your mirrors but keep your eyes on the road in front of you.
Our life in Christ is similar. Yes, we need to keep a glance in our rearview (the word “remember” is used at least 227 times in Scripture according to the NASB), but we have to keep our eyes fixed on the resurrected Jesus and moving forward so that we might press on to maturity.
It can become overwhelming if we look too long in that rearview. It is only meant for momentary glances. Whether we be looking at our past ministry efforts or our past in general. The rearview can be filled with regrets and if only’s that paralyze us and Jesus came to tell the paralyzed to pick up their pallet and walk.