Looking Back. . .

It feels rather awkward to have not posted in nearly two years! I smiled when I looked at the previous title, "Seven More Semesters to Go!" when I realized that it may very well have become "Seven More Years to Go!" Quite possibly no one has even looked at this blog, and so I should not feel awkward at all.

I seem to favor posting near the ends of semesters. There is something about these times--almost as though they are made for looking back over the last several weeks and months, surveying the wreckage and treasure of all that's taken place, and asking myself how things have changed and what things I have learned. Sometimes that's a hard question to ask.

How have I changed? I've acquired lots and lots of knowledge--but have I cultivated a deeper love for Truth? I've spent a lot of time planning for the future--but have I grown in treasuring the time I spend on my knees committing that future? It feels like I've been running, running, running all semester--but was it forward, backward, or just in circles? Maybe time will tell. All that I can do is cling tenaciously to the promise that when God starts something in one of His children, He finishes it, as Philippians 1:6 asserts.

Then--what have I learned? We ask one another, "What has God been teaching you lately?" Sometimes, that's an awkward question because it makes me realize that I haven't been listening for what God has to say. But in the position of looking back, it seems like there's always a message I can see, almost as though tracing back the motions of His hand.

This semester one of my major lessons was in interpellation. That's a fancy term that plays out in a fairly simple fashion: something addresses you as a particular identity and tells you, "This is who you are." Then you respond as though this is, in fact, who you are. I'm not sure that I'd really recognized that this is one way that the system of this world works on people. It bombards us, day after day after day with the message, "This is who you are. This is who you are. This is who you are," and we start to believe it and act like it's true. We have a fighting chance against this interpellation when we go back to God's Word and find Him there saying, "This is who I AM. This is who you are in relation to who I AM" and choose to believe it. It's a lot like Romans 12:2--"And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect."

So, looking back this semester I see all sorts of things, both regrets and things that make me leap up and shout for joy. But most of all, looking back I see evidence for hope.

I think the Psalmists were proponents of looking back and taking stock. Take Psalm 105, for instance--in its opening, it proclaims, "Remember His wonders which He has done, His marvels, and the judgments uttered by His mouth, O seed of Abraham, His servant, O sons of Jacob, His chosen ones!" The Psalmist calls his audience back to the past, to remember their heritage, that long ago, God chose Jacob--and chose them. The psalm continues to tell the story of God's faithfulness in His covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, leading the Israelites to the Promised Land. What truth! When we look back, we discover that no matter how rough the journey has been, God has never dropped the promises He proclaimed, even when we forgot them. Praise Him!