It’s always really tempting to look back at what’s past with the ‘rose-tinted’ spectacles of nostalgia! When I was young, the sun always seems to have been shining – except on snowy days which I don’t remember being cold!
Adult life teaches us that our perceptions are skewed: we remember things being better, but at the time they almost certainly seemed to be worse than they were before!
On Sunday morning we saw from Ezra ch 3 that having sought to apply God’s Word and keep everyone’s attention on His faithfulness, God’s people rebuilt the foundations of their new temple. Those who remembered what had gone before could only lament what had been lost, while others cheered their progress. As people who worship the Lord, we know that we can look forward, not with empty optimism but with faith.
We’re sometimes disappointed when He doesn’t seem to have given us what we hoped for, but that may well be because we haven’t paid attention to what He promised! We worship a God who ALWAYS keeps His promises: He did it in Ezra’s day and He’s still doing it now:
One of the most amazing things about the Lord is that He continues to love us even when we are, at times, far from loveable. His feelings towards us as we trust in the Lord Jesus, are always feelings of love. That doesn’t mean that He doesn’t guide and at times discipline us for our good, but it does mean that we can be sure of Him.
Whatever our view of the past, we can look to the future with real hope. Indeed, Christians who read God’s Word are neither optimists nor pessimists, we are as one commentator describes it ‘Hopetimists’.
Spencer Shaw