Looking Back

Scripture Reading: Genesis 50:20

You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good…

Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backward.” Every once in a while, I reflect on my life. I think about the paths I have chosen and those that were chosen for me, and I wonder what would have been different if I had traveled alternate routes. In the end, life and all of its outcomes are what they are.

My heart can go in a few different directions with this knowledge. Pride can capture my spirit if I evaluate things as having gone well and I think that I am living “my best life now.” I can attribute my successes and blessings as being a consequence of my wisdom and skills. Ego and self-exaltation will be the rotten fruit of that corrupt root. But I may be happy in the worldly sense.

If, on the other hand, trials have constantly attended the trails I have hiked, I may succumb to depression and discouragement. Regret will be the dominant tale I tell, and I will sing the blues. I will be unhappy.  

There is a third path. It grows out of an understanding of the Sovereignty of God. It comes from knowing that whatever happens, wherever my footsteps take me, God is in control. This is the way of faith, a faith that believes that “all things work together for good for those that love God and are called according to His purpose.” This way of a faith believes that even what others might mean for evil, God intends to bring good out of it.

Faith is necessary in this way living. As Kierkegaard said, these things “can only be understood backward.” When Joseph was tossed in the pit and then enslaved, he couldn’t possibly have understood how God was going to use that for good. It was only years later when famine came and he found himself in a position to save his people, that he understood that even though his brothers meant it for evil, God meant it for good.

We, the people of faith, will understand one day. That day of clarity may come, as it did for Joseph, when we are in our final days on earth and look backward and see the way we walked was surely the path God led us down. Or, it may come after this life and in the next, when from the perspective of eternity, we see and will sing, “All the Way My Savior Leads Me.”

Pride might give us worldly happiness, and regrets will make us unhappy, but faith in the Providence of God will give us deep and lasting joy.