Looking Over our Shoulder

A day that might be called "The Day After" is always an interesting day.  "The Day After" comes the day after Christmas, the day after Easter, the day after a birthday, or maybe even, the day after the loss of someone we love.  Such days come in all shapes and sizes.  I remember the day after, the week after, the year after I retired from the pulpit and came to a new life on the farm.  Life does bring us to moments that stand apart from what we might call the regular days, but none of us can live in those days.  Life is not lived in the special days, but in the ordinary days.  

When the disciples experienced the glory of heaven breaking in upon the earth on the Mt. of Transfiguration, they would have built shrines and stayed had Jesus approved of their building plans.  Surely, after Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection, they would have chosen for Him to stay, but He was on His way back into the invisible realm from which He had come.  It is a natural thing for us to do.  Whatever is past has a way of holding us in a way the uncertainty of the future cannot do; yet, it is into the future that God is always leading us.  

Forward is His mode of operation.  When we talk about the leading of God, implicit within understanding what that means is the reality that God is not going to allow us to make a memorial out of the past or the present no matter how meaningful the moment might be.  God is always leading us away from where we are comfortable because when we are comfortable, we are easily lulled into believing that we need only ourselves. He is the God of the future and it is into the future that He is planning for us that He seeks to lead us.  We can never go forward into His future if we are looking over our shoulder.