Scripture:

Heaven! Pay attention and I will speak; Earth! Listen to the words of my mouth.

My teaching will fall like raindrops; my speech will settle like dew— like gentle rains on grass, like spring showers on all that is green— because I proclaim the Lord’s name: Give praise to our God!

The rock: his acts are perfection! No doubt about it: all his ways are right!He’s the faithful God, never deceiving; altogether righteous and true is he.But children who weren’t his own sinned against him with their defects; they are a twisted and perverse generation.

Is this how you thank the Lord, you stupid, senseless people?Isn’t he your father, your creator? Didn’t he make you and establish you?

Remember the days long past; consider the years long gone. Ask your father, he will tell you about it; ask your elders, they will give you the details:

When God Most High divided up the nations— when he divided up humankind— he decided the people’s boundaries based on the number of the gods.

Surely the Lord’s property was his people; Jacob was his part of the inheritance. God found Israel in a wild land— in a howling desert wasteland— he protected him, cared for him, watched over him with his very own eye.

Consider:

In 1905, the philosopher George Santayana published a book which is, as many philosophy books can be, very long and very tedious. However, there is a nugget which emerged from that book which has been shared and reshared for years -

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.".

We’ve heard similar quotes in many forms over the years - Edmund Burke said those “will not look forward to posterity who don’t not look back to their ancestors”. Mark Twan is apocraphyly quoted as saying “History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.”

But Santayana’s quote is the which has had the most impact, including being quoted by Winston Churchill during one of his war speeches in parliament during WW2.

While he may want to claim complete credit for the sentiment, the truth is this nugget of eternal truth echoes through time at least back to Deuteronomy 32. If we are to look forward to a meaningful and secure future, we must be a student of the past. Past doesn’t mean just our own memory of “how things used to be”, but a deep and serious retelling of the stories, triumphs, failures, and values through out all of world history.

Our ancient ancestors carried great wisdom and truth which we miss out on in our modern assumption that progress makes us better and smarter. While Galileo didn’t have a smart phone, he was able to calculate - by hand - the location of several planets we where only able to confirm hundreds of years later with very powerful telescopes. And contrary to popular narratives, they knew the world was round.

In our great quest for what’s next, I wonder if we take the time to mine the resources of what has been. Chances are whatever obstacles face you on the path of life, someone (maybe you) has faced them before. We were not the first - or only - person to find yourself in a pandemic (remember the Spanish Flu of 1914 or the Black Death in the 1400s?) - and we had the advantage of knowing what caused it. We are not the first to deal with fights in the Middle East over shipping lanes (Remember the Phoenicians?), or the only ones dealing with national identity and political tensions (Remember, Remember the Fifth of November?)

We would do well to look back and remember the past, because that is how we move forward into the future. It’s not an overcoming or an erasing of what has been, but a building from it. We should remember.

Respond:

What story does your history tell you about your future? Take a few minutes to consciously identify a struggle, choice, or obstacle you are facing. Then, maybe take a quick Google to see all the history, the stories which walk alongside yours. What could you learn from their pasts which will help shape your future?

Pray:

Ancient God, we are so thankful your wisdom passes our own understanding. Help us to tap into our roots when our limbs grow weak or tired, so we will know that the story of what has been can shape the story of what will be. Amen.

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