Look Back

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness,
Who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were hewn
And to the quarry from which you were dug.”  Isaiah 51:1

While it is not good to dwell too much on the past - whether in pride of past accomplishments, or despondency over past failures, or grieving over past losses - it is well never to forget what God has done for us. In this passage, Israel is reminded of Abraham and Sarah who had been dug out of the pit of paganism, and cut out of the rock of idolatry, and God had greatly blessed.

David, looking back, had written that, “He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay” (Psalm 40:2). Paul looked back and said: “For you have heard of my former manner of life...how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure...But when God...called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me...they were glorifying God because of me” (Gal. 1:13, 15-16, 24).

Whatever our own background may be - bigoted skeptics, or flagrant sinners, or self-righteous hypocrites - God has indeed, if we are now saved by His grace, dug us out of a pit and set us on a solid rock. We were “strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). But “He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Col. 1:13).

“Such were some of you,” wrote Paul of such gross sins as fornication, idolatry, homosexuality, adultery, and thievery, as well as covetousness and drunkenness - “but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:9-11). An occasional look back will help us to remember more often to look up in humble thankfulness for the grace of God.