Looking forward looks too much like the rear view unless we have faith
The problem is or rather the challenge is that when we are creative in our looking forward looking back we need to ensure that we are not captured by the one or the other. In looking back we may find ourselves looking into the face of Medusa and become paralysed so that we cannot turn towards the future but remain constantly looking back petrified in reminiscence. In looking to the future the same challenge presents itself but more uniquely as it turns us back to the past because of our fear of God's purposes in our future. We are once again petrified because of our uncertainty as to the future with an inability to place our faith in God's presence but rely solely on our own contrivances. The purpose of looking back is to understand where God has been and to remind ourselves that it is we who have missed the opportunities that God presents. Sometimes it is in our petrified fear that we cannot grasp what God calls us to and so we refuse the joy that would come in God's presence.
The missed opportunities that we need to look for are those times when we did not give joy for others to receive. When we were to wrapped up in our own miseries that we were unable to spend a few minutes with an other to perceive their pain and walk along beside them. How often have we failed to ask the question, so much so that we have to have a day dedicated to it, "Are you OK?". How often have we been a visible face of Christ to those in pain and we have missed the opportunity of receiving the joy that comes when Christ's love is expressed in the lives of another person? As the writer to the Thessalonians puts it "It is the breath of life to us" (1 Thess. 3.8), for this is where the joy is found. This seems awfully negative but when we look to the past it is to discover the missed opportunities so that we can ensure that we do not repeat them because if we do, then yes it is joyless, yes, it is depressing and yes, it is petrifying for we are not growing in faith, in love and in joy.
What then of the future? Is it as depressing as we believe or have we the ability to rise to greet Christ and find the joy of God's presence? Christ's apocalyptic words do not appear to be encouraging (Lk 21.25-36). Yet, the warnings are warnings of the past for if we recognise those moments that we have just relived we will have the opportunities of sacrificing ourselves for the other and find Christ's presence. It is only when we do not learn that the effects of dissolution and disappointment begin to effect all that we do. We look to the future with faith, constantly in prayer and recognising God's presence around us. We strive for the community to which we belong and sacrifice our own needs for the needs of the other. We refuse the enjoyments that we are used to and find ourselves with the joy of Christ as we minister and labour for the justice and peace to bring a community out of despair into Joy. We are the harbingers of Joy as Christ becomes manifest in the incarnation but only if we ourselves become joy bringers.
I look forward with faith, knowing God's presence in my life. I rely on God's guidance in the face of tragedy and I try to bring that faith into being as I minister to family, and community, friends and strangers. Only when we truly believe these statements, only when we manifest them to the greatest of our ability, only when we live as Christ will we begin to bring the changes that God demands of all God's people.
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