You Can’t Walk into the Future If You Are Still Reaching Into The Past

Deadline. It’s the final day to submit grades. Teachers have been on a grading marathon, and panicky students want to know what can be done to raise low grades. The begging, pleading, and empty promises begin. Time has caught many procrastinating students off guard and the realization that report cards will not reflect their ability or potential. The most common actions students want to take is to go back and make up assignments from the past. The dilemma in education these days is whether to allow students to go backwards and make up work. Where’s the lesson in this? If students are so busy making up past work, how can they possibly move forward to completing the assignments in the new semester? They can’t walk into the future because they are too busy trying to makeup for the gaps of the past.

What hinders us from walking into the future? What is in our past that makes us revisit issues, relationships, and missed opportunities? What makes us lower our anchor and settle? Just like students who want to make up late work, we do we not move forward because we want to make up circumstances in our past. Sometimes, we like to stay in the past because it’s familiar and comfortable.

In the midst of our country’s current fight about being vaccinated or not, politicians, neighbors, and communities are divided. Perhaps people are tired. We are living in an age where people have stagnated and grown comfortable with what once was. The idea of seeing and living in the future is where we have on our blinders. We don’t want or accept change. We want what we have always had without disruption. And if things don’t go our way…

Our response was much like the children of Israel. Think about their journey in comparison to the pandemic. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt, but they were working on a routine schedule. They knew that they were to be on the job with the rising of the sun and work until dusk, everyday, all day. Like the Israelites, we are creatures of habit. We start our day and take advantage of going to work, shopping, and socializing, all without masks everyday. Why? Because life is good and uninterrupted.

Next to the COVID vaccine, the hottest interruption in life is education. Communities think they know best without walking in the shoes of those on the frontline with students daily. The questions are: Why is the school going to e-learning? When are we going to get over this business of quarantining? Why are schools closing? Why does everyone need to wear a mask? We hear these questions all the time, and we have to ask ourselves what future changes in protocol, leadership, and educational systems terrifies our communities?

Think about the Israelites. On their journey, they had everything they needed: leadership and a loving God. But when the journey became a bit challenging, they wanted to immediately retreat to what they had known: slavery. Imagine if they had gone back to Egypt, back to the past. The experience would never have been the same. The conditions may have been worse or the production rate could have been increased. Failing to look forward could have caused them to miss blessings, lessons, and miracles. Looking back could have changed the trajectory of history.

The same concept applies in the modern day battle of masked versus unmasked and virtual versus face-to-face. Accept that the world we once knew has changed. We have to ask ourselves if we are going to hang on to the past of what once was, or are we going to walk into the future filled with a hope that change may be okay. Romans 12:2 encourages us not to look back at behaviors and customs from the past. Allow God to walk you into the future as a newly transformed person. Moving forward, stop trying to makeup and replicate that which has come to past, and embrace the newness of what lies ahead. Isn’t this what we are trying to teach students? Don’t look in the past; make corrections in your actions and step into the future.

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