Thursday, February 9, 2006

Don’t Look Back

But Jesus told him, “Anyone who puts a hand to the plow and then looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.” —Luke 9:62

I find it interesting how we can look at the past through rose-colored glasses.  Remember the children of Israel?  They had been delivered from the tyranny and bondage of Egypt, where they had been slaves for years.  They cried out to God for deliverance, and the Lord answered their prayers through a man named Moses.

As they were making their way through the wilderness, God supernaturally fed them with an incredible substance called manna.  It was like bread from heaven.  They had it daily for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  But after awhile, they got a little tired of it.  They said, “We are sick of manna.  We remember the good old days back in Egypt, where we used to eat garlic, leeks and onions.  [Their breath must have really stunk, by the way.]  Those were the good old days… If we could only go back.”

They spoke of the good old days, but they basically ate table scraps in Egypt, because they were slaves.  Their lives were miserable.  Yet in their imaginations, they had magnified these scraps to some sumptuous feast they had each and every day.  They were not looking at the past accurately.