Woodhaven Baptist Church

17 February 2003

Dear Friend,

"Memory. All alone in the moonlight I can smile at the old days, I was beautiful then. I remember the time I knew what happiness was, let the memory live again."*

Many times we don't just stroll down memory lane but try to take up residence there. We treat life like a grammar lesson. We make the past perfect and the present tense. Let's be honest, there were great times and tragic times in the past. Sometimes they happened simultaneously. As exciting as the Apollo 11 moon landing was, many of the U.S. men were fighting a war in Viet Nam at the same time. The great economic growth of the 1980's also brought AIDS. The wonderful Americana view, that television gives us of the fifties was also a time of legalized racism. And the great joy I had when we were expecting our first born, Sarah, was tempered by the death of my mother which happened during the pregnancy.

My point is that sometimes the joy of the past clouds the pain, and the opposite is true for some of us, the pain of the past clouds the joy. The good news is that you are alive today. The past is history. It is a building block of who you are and who you will be. How you build on top of it is up to you. God reminded the Israelites of their past many times to show His faithfulness in the past to ease their fears about the present and the future. Look to the One who was and is and is to come. The hymn says, "I know Who holds tomorrow, and I know Who holds my hand."

"Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:12-14.

*By Trevor Nunn after T.S. Elliot from the musical 'CATS'

With love,

Pastor Scott Patz

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Last updated: 16 June 2005