Article by: Curtis Beaird
Photography by: Norma W. Beaird
Looking back is a mistake.
We will not move forward until we stop using the language of "back" as in.........
"get back the American Dream"
Or, if you are a politician, you will promise to..........
"give back the American Dream"
Religiously, "back" is expressed in the very popular Charismatic song...........
"I'm going to take back what the devil stole from me"
Nostalgia, even a militant, anger-driven nostalgia, looks, longs for and
leans in the wrong direction......... back......
Sorry, but life, as scary, risky, and as relentless as it is, is lived forward. Which movies do you enjoy? The adventure with a heroine who at least attempts to meet the challenge? Or, do you prefer to offer up the price of a movie to watch some guy mope through a two hour pity party?
I have it on good word that the backward glance turns the person focused on the recovery of yesterday, who spends time grieving its loss, into a pillar of salt. How do I know we have become a very large cow lick? Everyone who wants to lead or influence yells at us. Bellowing is the new gold standard for a would-be leader. Wonder why? Because, we the people, for all our business and whirling and railing, have become an inert lump.
Faith is not a doctrine. It is a way of life.
It does not look back, unless its focus is on remembering the acts of God. Our memories focus upon me, me, me, and my lost illusion. Faithful people know little of disillusionment because they are not about illusions. They are about faith. i.e. "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." "We walk by faith, not by sight."
Security is an illusion. It is the unacknowledged, but failed lie, that we fashioned into an idol and gleefuly followed into the dark. Welcome to The Dead Zone.
The Dead Zone ends the day that Faith dawns. Faith frees the imagination from its bondage to anger. Faith changes rage into the energy of invention. Faith enables and encourages us to risk exploration. It creates. Faith, the "substance of things hoped for", generates that hope.
The power of faith blooms from, at least to our minds, a most unlikely souce.
Looking back is a mistake.
Hebrews 11:1 (King James Version)
11 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
II Corinthians 5: 6 - 7 (King James Version)
6 Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:
7 For we walk by faith, not by sight:
Copyright 2012, Curtis Beaird. All rights reserved.
