Your other hand.

“No more wasting your life chasing dead ideals.
See the past? It’s gone. Let’s roll on with the show.” Quoted from the song; Your Other Hand – Clare Bowditch.

I really like Clare Bowditch’s music, I’m not really sure if shes Christian or not, I’d assume not, but some of her songs may suggest otherwise (People Like Me, People Like You – look up the lyrics and you’ll see what I mean). Anyway, I was listening to her album today, and I don’t usually listen to this song cos the start of it is very ‘folky’ and it sort of puts me off, but i decided to listen to it today. As soon as I heard that section of the bridge, I felt something click in my head.

I think that too often we find ourselves contemplating the past, rather than embracing the future. I find myself doing so on many many many many MANY occasions. “I wish I did this, didn’t do that, didn’t say this, said no, asked why” etc. But there is no point in drowning yourself with thoughts of what you could have done, but didn’t do. You can’t change the past, cos “It’s gone”. God doesn’t want us to live in the past, because when we live in the past, we learn nothing – we simply repeat our mistakes and live in a cycle of sin and shame. Jesus didn’t die for us to simply regret and wallow in self pity. He died to set us free, free from shame, guilt and pain, but we need to embrace this freedom he lovingly gave us. By continuously chasing your past, not only are you wasting precious time, but you are fighting a losing battle.

However, that said, we can’t simply continue on with life without changing things about ourselves. Mistakes and experiences from the past all work together to craft us into unique individuals. If we simply make our mistakes and continue making the same mistakes, life turns into a sequence of pain. I believe we make mistakes for a simple reason – we are imperfect. But God made us this way, he didn’t want us to be prim and perfect people. He lets us make bad choices, but he does so with the hope that we will all come to our senses and learn from our mistakes. God wants us to look back on the past and see where we went wrong so that we can grow not only in maturity, but in faith.

I guess what I’m trying to say in this short entry is that, living in the past is like being dead – No growth occurs. We need to embrace the time we have, and learn from our past to create a worthwhile future for ourselves.