I was meeting with someone in my office a few weeks ago and while we were talking they happened to notice a picture I have on my desk.  It’s one of those photo’s from years ago that we all have.  It’s a picture of my wife and I sitting together, when we were young…

Ugh, I feel so old when I say things like when were young.  See that’s the thing about getting older, you don’t really notice it’s happening.  They caught a glimpse of the photo and with a smile in their voice, you know what I mean, they said, “who’s that?”  Now I have a confession to make, my first response was, who do you think that is!!!  It’s me, you know the guy right here across from you!  Duh!  Then I looked at the photo and had to laugh myself.  20 lbs lighter (and that’s being nice to myself) and a full head of hair, yeah the stuff on the top of your head not your face!  I found myself chuckling along with them as we talked about how time flies and all that jazz.

It sometimes can seem a shocking reality to look back, to remember how far you’ve come.  Time affects every area of our lives, from the shockingly apparent physical changes to the more subtle ways it affects all of us.  Time has its way and if your like me you don’t spend much time thinking about all the things you have gained and well, lost.  I just don’t like to be reminded of the reality of my current situation in light of my past most days.  But in reading this past week again through God’s conversation with the first of the seven churches in Revelation, Ephesus, I began to hear God calling me to remember, to contemplate how far I’ve come.

Revelation 2:5  “So remember the high point from which you have fallen.  change your hearts and lives and do the things you did at first.”

God has just finished calling the church of Ephesus to return to Love.  They had arrived in their present reality and were proud of where they had arrived.  Content to live in that present reality, they had like so many of us forgotten how far they had come.  So often it’s easier just to live in the present.  Whether that’s because the past is too painful or because we would rather just bask in the glory of our own arrival to the land of “I’ve got this figured out”, here in the present we stay, ignoring where we have been before.

What if remembering how far we’ve come it vital to how far we will go?

I believe that as we journey with Jesus we are constantly encouraged to see ourselves in the light of Gods greatness and glory.  That at our core as human beings we are utterly hopeless without God’s amazing and gracious intervention.  That sort of continual pondering reminds us that this miracle of life and freedom we enjoy has nothing to do with our own human efforts.  It is by God’s amazing and life transforming love and grace that we have been brought out of the ditch of brokenness and death into life!

So I wonder if you would join me today in remembering the height from which you have fallen.  For I believe the knowledge of our desperate need for a Savior then is enough to remind us of our continual desperate need for Him now!

Grace & Peace

Jon