Forgetting what is behind
Paul straining forward
Picture the runner in the final straight. He does not turn his head to admire the part of the track already behind him, does not relive the stumble at the start that nearly cost him everything; his eyes are locked on the tape, his whole body straining toward it. Paul reaches for that image from a prison cell, and he of all people had a full track behind him to relive. There were the proud old credentials, the pedigree he once counted as gain, a religious resume that had been his whole identity. And there was the wreckage, the violent failures, the blood on his hands before the Damascus road. He could have spent his life facing either direction. Instead he says he does one thing: forgets what lies behind and strains toward what lies ahead. Two backward pulls snare people coming through upheaval, and Paul names neither as harmless: the ache of nostalgia for the certainty that broke, and the endless replay of the rubble and who caused it. Over both, God speaks the same word through Isaiah. Do not keep staring at the former things. Behold, I am doing a new thing, even now carving a road through the wilderness and running rivers across the desert.
“Forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal.”
— Paul, to the Philippians — Philippians 3:13-14 (WEB)
“Don't remember the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing... I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”
Two backward glances can trap you, and you should know which one has hold of your neck. One is nostalgia, the aching wish to go back to the faith you had before it cracked, when the answers were simple and the ground felt solid. The other is rumination, the loop that plays the wreckage again and again, rehearsing the wound and the names of those who caused it. Paul names a better discipline than either: the one thing of forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. Hear clearly what this is not. It is not denial. It is not pretending the past did not happen, or that the loss did not cost you, or that the wrong done to you was nothing. You are not asked to erase the track you have run. You are asked to stop letting it own your gaze. There is a difference between honoring what happened and living with your head permanently turned backward. God says He is doing a new thing, that He is making a road through the very wilderness you are standing in. Turn your face toward it. The tape is ahead of you, not behind.