A Trip Down Memory Lane - Pt 4

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. (Romans 8:31-34 ESV).

The past is a source of faith for the future. Our reading is a part of a larger passage that I often quote to others who may be struggling in difficult times. The past serves the future by feeding faith, because of all the faithful works of God to make a future for us in the past. Israel failed precisely to do this and that is why they were undone in the wilderness (cf. Psalm 106). They rebelled because they didn’t remember. They didn’t remember and they didn’t have faith to walk with Moses through the sea the way they should have. And they grumbled on the other side. All of it was rooted in forgetting past grace. So they didn’t trust him for future grace, because they didn’t remember past grace. No one disagrees about the complexity of our world. That does cause us to wonder how we will manage and get to “our future”. Globally, it is not a time of peace and harmony. That makes us wary and unsure, because we have to live in these times and try to pull some happiness and success into our lives out of that lack. It can make our own lives off balance; and, combined with our own individual issues, it can be discouraging. These times take our courage and strength to get through. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it so well in our meme today: “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” He said that a full year before his famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. It was on September 12, 1962, as he spoke at the Park-Sheraton Hotel in New York City to commemorate the centennial of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. I wonder if he could’ve imagined all that would transpire in the next six years, ending with his assassination in 1968. I rather doubt he thought about that; he thought about the first step! We have that opportunity in our lives. We know the God who has gone before us winning our deliverance. We can remember Him and trust the future into his capable hands!