Looking Backwards Towards the Future
Psalm 77
“I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds.” - Psalm 77:11-12
You ever have one of those days? One of those gut-wrenching days when the sun’s withering heat is a symbol of your melting spirit? One of those days when it’s all you can do to feverishly clench the rapidly fraying threads of your life? Or one of those weeks?
Or how about one of those seasons of life? The kind where you trudge, the weight of the world upon you. Sorrow feels like your only companion, and it’s a cheap companion at that.
You can relate, I’m sure. Financial woes. Despair over your kids. Piercing loneliness. Maybe a diagnosis that shakes you to your core and makes you swing your fist back and forth and cry out “Why?” through misty eyes.
The Psalmist sure has. Look at these lines of woe:
“I cried out to God for help:
I cried out to God to hear me.
When I was in distress, I sought the Lord;
At night I stretched out untiring hands,
And I would not be comforted.
I remembered you, God, and I groaned;
I meditated and my spirit grew faint.”
Indeed, the Psalmist knows the bitterness-filled, groaning prayers that echo off bedroom walls only to fall in thud-like silence around him. He knows the anguished, unsettling quiet of unanswered prayers. His spirit asks the question that we almost dare not offer:
“Will the Lord reject forever?
Will he never show his favor again?
Has his unfailing love vanished forever?
Has his promise failed for all time?
Has God forgotten to be merciful?
Has he in anger withheld his compassion?”
Maybe you’re there, where uncertainty lingers too long, where God seems distant. Maybe life feels weary, or even just harder than normal, or harder than what you like.
What’s the remedy? How do we keep walking into an unknown but seemingly bleak future with lead-like heavy feet?
The Psalmist has the answer for that as well. We walk forwards with our eyes looking back. We always hear that hindsight is 20/20. We can see things so clearly in reverse. Maybe that’s the way we need to keep taking steps forward: by looking back.
In the midst of his fragile state of uncertainty, the Psalmist does something instructive: he goes to the scrapbook.
“I will remember the deeds of the LORD;
yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
I will consider all your works
and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”
When the future is unclear and anxiety threatens, we need to pause and look back. We need to see God’s faithfulness. We need to tell the classic stories of God’s triumphs in our lives. We need to encourage one another with testimonies of how God has worked in the past. We need to get wide eyes when someone starts in with “I remember when God . . .” When tomorrow seems shaky, we need to remember yesterday. A bedrock of our faith is that our God is omnipotent AND unchanging. Our God is the same God who saved the Israelites time after time. Our God is the same God who thwarted the plans of the forces of evil. Our God is the same God who upheld us with his mighty hand in our times of deepest woe.
When heavy tears mist our view of the horizon, we need to look back to see how the future will unfold.
Near the end of the Psalm, as the Psalmist recounts natural phenomena explainable only as the workings of the Almighty, he says these poignant lines:
“Your path led through the sea,
your way through the mighty waters,
though your footprints were not seen.”
Even when we can’t physically see, when the footprints of the Lord don’t seem to make an impression on the soil of our lives, even then we know that God has been at work saving his people.
And we know that’s who he’ll be going forward.