The Bad Ole Days

 

 Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you endured in a great conflict full of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. (Hebrews 10:35-36)

          Remember the bad ole days, after the good ole days. Remember how you were mistreated and withstood the abuse because you knew you had better and lasting possessions. We’re back to the issue of spiritual myopia. We tend to think that how things are now is going to continue forever and ever, amen!  And the writer of Hebrews tells us to think back. My automatic example of this is my last job. I was glad to get it because it solved the problem of lack of income but quickly came to hate it because of the way employees were treated. I also hated it because I could see no good way out of it. I was going to be stuck there forever.

          And then July, 2015 came along and change began. By the end of September, I was no longer in that job. In three months, the torment that would continue through all eternity was gone. What things that were going to continue forever have ended in your life? We should make lists, and date the events if we can.

          In his book, Journey of Desire, John Eldredge writes about his journal. There’s a section in it in which he keeps central truths that he has learned over the years. One of his entries is “the story continues.” Life is unfolding. It is going somewhere. This list of bad ole days that have ended is the sort of thing to keep in such a special place, where we can easily find it when we need to be reminded that the bad ole days don’t last forever. It also reminds us that just as the particularly bad ole days of a bad job don’t last forever, so the bad ole days of life on earth don’t last forever, and what comes after is even better than walking away from a hated job.

          If you’re like me, you probably don’t like the idea of daydreaming about how great heaven will be. My daydreams are spoiled by visions of mansions and gardens – things that make heaven all about me and my enjoyment. I don’t want to build an imaginary heaven that will make the real one a disappointment. In other words, my daydreams about heaven are the bad ole days continued into eternity, because it’s bounded by the idea that for me to have all I want, others must be excluded. If I have, they cannot. But my having God doesn’t mean that you have Him any less. My having a mansion in glory settled in a forest with a stream running nearby doesn’t mean that you can’t also have a mansion in glory settled in a forest with a steam running nearby.

          So when things get tough or stressed, we need to look at the bad ole days and remember that they don’t last forever, and we need to live with the knowledge that the eternity into which we are stepping is even better than we can imagine.