No tomorrow in yesterday

No, dear brothers, I am still not all I should be but I am bringing all my energies to bear on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, Phil 3:13 (Life Application)

I remember a brief few minutes with one of the company CEO’s that I worked for. He had just listed his company on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and they had an interview with him on television. It was quite the WOW event! I met him at the coffee bar the next morning and asked him how it was. At first he didn’t know what I was talking about and when I reminded him, his response was “Oh, THAT! That was yesterday; it is history – forgotten about already."

His story always reminds me that the past is the past; whether good or bad. You can’t change it, you can’t enjoy it again – a once off offer; never to be repeated! If it was good,it is going to fade as time goes by. If it was not pretty you can’t go back and revise it. There is no point in asking, “Why (me)?”, “Why not (me)”, “What did I do wrong or do to deserve it?”, etc, etc. Fact is, it’s gone and it doesn’t care what your name is! All you can do is take whatever you could learn from it and move forward. If you don’t, it could drag you under, drowning you. Everyone fall down at times but it doesn’t have to be – shouldn’t be – fatal.

The future is not found in the past.

Yet there is one ray of hope: his compassion never ends... Great is his faithfulness; his loving kindness begins afresh each day. (Lamentations 3:21, 23) But forget all that – it is nothing compared to what I’m going to do! For I’m going to do a brand new thing. See, I have already begun! Don’t you see it? (Isaiah 43:5)

God is not a God of yesterdays, except to remind us of His proven faithfulness and the lessons to be learnt. We shouldn’t get stuck spending our energy on something we can't change either. We need to determine each day that today is a new day; to leave yesterday in the past where it belongs and to celebrate the beauty that is right before us; to not let it be tarnished by the memories of ‘used to be’.

*The picture is from MS Word Clipart