My grandson Luca stared at me in one of his disconcertingly studied ways. He tilted his face one way and then another. I wondered what he was thinking. I felt pretty sure he would let me know.
“I can still see, just a tiny bit, your past,” he said finally. He squinted his eyes.
I considered that a moment.
“You mean, you can see how I looked when I was young?”
He nodded and held up his thumb and index finger. He put them up against his squinted eye. I imagined his blurred image of me as he peeled away some of the layers.
“Just a TINY bit I can still see it.”
I’m pretty sure TINY was in all capitals.
No light shone between the fingers and the eye they framed.
Ah yes. The past. That long-long-long ago past. Luca continued to stare, his eyes attempting to iron smooth the mapped lines of my skin. And by some miracle, in there, he saw a little flash of the once upon a time, me.
How very tiny his view; how complete is God’s.
Luca can’t see all the layers of my life, the decades, or the seasons. Through his blurred pupils, my blue Schwinn never flew over downhill dirt paths with the wind knotting blonde curls. He can’t picture a young bride or a move with three little girls across the globe.
He doesn’t see the identity package with which I view myself, as a wife, mother, or grandmother. The laughter and tears that mark each line he sees, will never touch his heart as deeply as they touch mine. And yet he sees…something…which in his eyes, represents me.
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. (Philippians 3:8-9 ESV)
When the Apostle Paul wrote these words to the church in Philippi, I wonder if his face bore the telltale sketch of a man once filled with passionate hatred for those who followed Jesus? Did marks of his dramatic conversion, financial losses, imprisonments, and persecution display in his leathered exterior?
Backgrounds form us. They mold, shape, and influence. Some are awful, many others sweet. But God can use all of them to testify of Himself, of His grace and mercy, and of hope in the gospel.
I spoke recently with someone whose lists of past hurts sounded current. It surprised me to discover that they had happened over sixty years ago, and not yesterday. They were kept fresh by his continual churning over those long ago offenses, and it showed in his angry face.
You’ve likely seen those TV warnings about “call before you dig.” Digging without first marking can be dangerous. There are gas lines, electrical lines, and at the very least, internet lines that when cut result in major consequences.
Shoveling into the past without a solid foundation in Christ, direction of the Holy Spirit, and guidance from His Word drives us into a pit of self.
Although my friend’s list is sad, even more tragic is that the generations following have absorbed those happenings into their own twisted version of history. They’ve heard repeated wrongs, true and untrue. Generations will inherit the same bitternesses passed down from father to child.
“I can still see, just a tiny bit, your past…”
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—(Ephesians 2:4-5 ESV)
Jesus offers us the freedom of laying down the past, its hurts and injustices, at the foot of the cross. The past, although still present within, no longer rules over us. Nurtured by His Spirit and His Word, He sees us transformed.
“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14 ESV)
My Luca-prompted-reflection flips through history pages of my life, the good, bad, and difficult. It testifies of God’s divine Sovereignty. I see its lettering written with the ink of grace.
And though my view is tiny, God’s is complete.
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