Blast from the Past

I took the kids roller skating for the first time today. Today is the 10-month anniversary of our arrival in the United States, and we are still experiencing many firsts. One of my oldest son's friends had a birthday party at the skating rink, so I loaded all of the kids up in the car, and off we went.

I haven't set foot in a skating rink for at least 15 years, but when I walked in, not much had changed. Everyone skated the same direction, under the same flashing lights, with bathrooms that had not been updated in a number of years, and the same snack line. I took pictures with my cell phone of the kids skating - I use that term loosely, because all three of them were falling all over the place - and was sending them to my wife. In my haste to send one, I accidentally sent a photo to another friend, who asked me if they were playing Bon Jovi or Michael Jackson over the speaker system. Thus began a conversation that took us back to youth and childhood.

Roller skating is a blast from the past. It's part of who I am, but it's just a part. It doesn't define who I am. It helped, in some small way, make me who I am today, but it doesn't control who I am today.

The church, as well as the people in it, would be wise to learn this concept. Our past informs our future, but it does not define it. Who we have been is not who we are now, nor does it determine who God wants us to be. Too often, we live in the glory days of what once was, and forget that we do not live in that time or place. Natalie Sleeth says it well in Hymn of Promise: "From the past will come the future; what it holds, a mystery..." She does not say that our past is our future; but because the future is unfolding, we can learn from our past to shape our future.

If this concept wasn't true, we would still experience slavery and inequality between men and women. To a degree, this still happens, but thanks to the people who learned from their past and forged a new future, we no longer experience either issue to the extent of the generations before us. We honor the past and we learn from it, and then we continue forward into God's preferred future for us.

I used to love to roller skate. I was pretty good at it. I could skate forwards and backwards, had some good footwork, could win the limbo or "shoot the duck." Today, as I watched people play limbo and "Four Corners," I was grateful that I learned from my past, but it doesn't define me. I'm not the same person I was 15 years ago. I will not be the same person 15 years from now - because God is at work, making all things new. Thanks be to God for the experience of the past, the joy of the present, and the promise of the future!