There is no forgiveness without giving up hope for a better past. The sentence grabbed me. How often have I re-played my life, and made past events different because it was comforting to my imagination? Would we not all like to re-live and correct those dumb mistakes, the foolish acts, the less than perfect life so that it never happened? But it did.
Perhaps that is the meaning of Jesus words, "when you put your hand to the plow, do not look back" (Lk 9:62). Perhaps Jesus is trying to reassure us that the past is not doomed, it is not set in stone, it does not define us. That being a follower means looking forward, not backward.
I think in some sense, our obsession with our past is mostly our obsession with ourselves. A monastic of many years said to me sadly, "I still don't know if God is pleased with me." I looked at her and said, "I don't think there is a problem with God. I think the problem is you are not pleased with yourself."
How true it is. God is standing by, watching us obsess, and wondering when we will give it up. Divinity is bigger than our pettiness. But we have to let it go to experience that wholeness from the Divine. We have to stop looking back, wishing the past were better. We must look forward, knowing it is our desire that matters. And that often, it is ourselves, not God, who is dissatisfied.
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