Remember The Past To Heed The Lessons Learned
Word-of-the-Day: ‘Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you.’ (Deuteronomy 32:7); ‘(11) <Asaph writes,> ‘I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember Your miracles of long ago. (12) I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”’ (Psalm 77:11-12)
Do you remember where you saw ‘Star Wars’ for the first time? Being May 4th, and unofficially ‘Star Wars Day’ (May the 4th Be With You), I can remember I saw it in our local mall’s theater soon after its release, in western Pennsylvania where I grew up, with some friends after it came out in 1977. I also remember when the ‘prequel’ of Star Wars Episode 1 came out on 19 May 1999. It was in south Tampa as I and my workmates went to see it in a theater at a shopping plaza off Dale Mabry Highway for the first showing at 11:30 AM that day.
I remember the ‘prequel’ a bit better as it is a more recent memory (though 27 years doesn’t seem like it was all that ‘recent’), and that unlike the first Star Wars this had great hype that preceded its release, and elsewhere the movie had people camping outside theaters nationwide to see it first. We thought we would take an early lunch to get tickets to a later show, but we walked right up, found tickets for the first showing available, and surprised at our good fortune, went in – and we had the theater all to ourselves, so we had an extended lunch break that day. (Popcorn and Junior Mints was a great lunch menu back then.)
We all have memories of events and activities, some which go back into the early days of our childhood. We remember what we encountered from then until now; some of these memories we treasure while some we wished we could erase. Nevertheless, there were lessons learned from those events along our life’s path to where we are right now; the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugliness of what we’ve endured.
God wants us to remember the past, and use those memories as a reminder to stay on His path. He also wants us to use what we’ve learned to teach the younger generations how to avoid the pitfalls that we fell into, or the pitfalls our parents didn’t avoid and taught us to miss. Remembering our past is important as it teaches and reminds us how to act in Righteousness and how not to act in wickedness. The history we teach our children and grandchildren, if based in fact and Godly wisdom, will give them a basis on how to react in similar events that they will face in their lifetimes.
The Israelites were told this by Moses as they wandered in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt. The story of Genesis, from the Creation to the Fall of Man, then the flood of Noah’s day to Joseph’s travails leading to his time as the manager of Egypt’s resources that led his brothers there as famine struck the region. The events that led Israel into bondage, and what God did in releasing the plagues to get the Pharoah to release them, and what happened after Israel took their eyes off the ever-present God who was seen – and heard – by them on Mount Siani while He gave Moses the Ten Commandments.
It was important for the Israelites to remember God’s blessings upon their lives, and His wrath upon them when they did wrong. Moses’ instructions of Deuteronomy 32:7 are this; those who lived through the Exodus were to pass the lessons learned in it down to the next generation, so they could apply those lessons to the trials and tribulations they would undoubtably would encounter. It gave Moses the impetus (through the urging of the Holy Spirit) to write down these events in the Pentateuch, or the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), so future generations would have the reference of what God did since the beginning of time.
There were more lessons to be learned, and more of those lessons to be documented for our benefit. The remainder of the Old Testament, the Gospels telling of Jesus’ ministry, the history of the early church in Acts, and the letters of inspiration, encouragement and correction in the letters of the New Testament are all given to us by God through the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of the authors of each book. The Holy Bible is God giving us the full five W’s (Who, What, Why, When, and Where) of His plan so we can understand it and how we can best apply those lessons when necessary.
If we learn from Scriptures, we can prepare ourselves not to fall into the traps as Samson did, or we can persevere like Job or Daniel when trials occur in our lives. We don’t have to wonder ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ as it is told in the four Gospels and further defined in the Epistles of Paul, Peter, and John. The Levite Asaph implores us in Psalm 77 to consider the Scriptures when dealing with life’s events, both good and bad.
When we apply Scriptural lessons to our own lives, even in events that happened before we accepted Jesus as our Savior, we can point back to those events as well as Scriptures to give relevance to instructions we provide to our children. Whether our children heed such instruction is their decision (as much as we would like to force them to follow it to the letter), but it is for us to use our personal history and the Bible to teach them. They in turn will learn, either through our instruction or through the ‘school of hard knocks’, and what they learn and remember will likewise be passed down.
Do not fret over memories that come back as unpleasant, but remember them and learn from them; use them to teach others to avoid those pitfalls you fell into. Remember the lessons the Bible teaches us, as it is full of people who wrote down what they learned through God’s inspiration. Your woes, like the woes of many of the Bible’s authors, are lessons we can avoid. Your blessings, the good that has occurred, are lessons we can try to replicate and cherish. God loves you, and has given you the ability to remember and to learn – and those who forget their history are often doomed to repeat it.
