Say Not, “The Former Days Were Better”
Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. (Ecclesiastes 7:10, ESV)
This… this is where I’ve been living far too much lately.
There have been circumstances, trials, and challenges that GOD has allowed which have me living in nostalgia. I love being a leader at work and a husband and father at home. Perhaps it’s the personality GOD has given me, but to lead a team at work and see all they can accomplish is a wonderful joy. Serving and leading my wife and children at home — offering them opportunities to travel, camp, hang out, go on day trips — has been a joy to do together.
Even laughter. I love opportunities to make jokes and hear my family laugh — it’s honestly one of my greatest joys to bring laughter to others.
Yet things have shifted. Some of the freedom I once had at work is now constrained a bit by changes outside my control. The opportunities for camping, boating, travel, and day excursions have been blunted by various life situations at home.
So instead, I scroll through “Facebook Memories” and see the things I was doing on this day in past years. It’s bittersweet — and, if I’m honest, often more bitter. I see what I can’t do instead of what lies before me. Even my joking at home, while not gone, has been tempered, as I sometimes even struggle to laugh myself.
GOD, through King Solomon, says this is not wise.
I could expand on many things in Ecclesiastes 7 that offer helpful and wise guidance. I don’t want to take this one verse out of context — and in fact, the whole section in Ecclesiastes 7 is Solomon helping us live wisely in a world we can’t fully control. This verse stands proverbially, but it fits within a larger call to trust God's providence in both joy and adversity (v. 14).
Yet as Christians, that’s not where we stop. We don’t simply pick a command, see how we’ve broken it, and then legalistically tell ourselves to “snap out of it.” Sure, it’s wise not to live in the past — good takeaway — but there’s something greater, something Solomon never saw in his day.
CHRIST.
My sinless Savior died — according to the will of the Father (Acts 2:23) — out of love to reconcile me to HIM. My bitterness and nostalgia, when it turns to discontent or craving what God hasn't given, becomes coveting — and that's sin. GOD is holy and wants nothing to do with it, yet HE desires that I be close to HIM. How? By laying my unholy sin on the cross with HIS Son, so HE can bring me home.
So may my nostalgia be fought not by willpower, but by the blood-bought freedom that is mine in CHRIST. Instead of looking back at my past, may I keep my eyes on my future — and on the Object of my future, JESUS CHRIST.
Just as I wrote yesterday on meditation — may this be a beautiful object of my meditation to fight the sinful coveting that nostalgia brings. May I look back on those memories as blessings I never deserved, and smile at what we were able to do together. Then may I keep my eyes forward, trusting HE has better things in store — perhaps even in this life.
Eyes forward — Eyes up.
Looking to JESUS, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of GOD.
(Hebrews 12:2, ESV)
What “former days” do you find yourself longing for, and how is the LORD calling you to fix your eyes forward on HIM instead?
His,
Matthew
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