20 Aug 2020 Discovering details of the past

Posted at 12:31 PMh in Faith by

History is a funny thing. For the most part, many of us are either regretting it, repeating it, forgetting it or spending time trying to remember it. I think a lot of that depends on what season of life you may be walking through.

For instance, back in 1989, I was a 16-year-old junior in high school and history was one of my least favorite subjects. It wasn’t that I had a bad teacher, I was just a bad student, lol. I didn’t see any reason in learning or retaining knowledge of things that had happened in the past. I felt I knew all I needed to know, and I was happy in my season of youthful, blissful ignorance. In retrospect, I think that it would have been nice to know then what I know now, but I doubt I would have developed all the character building that life taught me along the way had that been the case.

I’d like to think as I’ve grown older and somewhat wiser, I’ve found myself much more interested in the details of historical information. Maybe it’s the popularity of all these ancestry sites we have now, but it really is fun digging through the history and discovering details of a past that you are a part of. Seeing an old photo of a great-great grandmother who has the exact same eyes as your child is just really interesting, and the more you study and research, the more you discover.

A 1-year-old Laurie Green.

This is also true in our walk with Jesus. It never fails me that the more time I spend investing, reading and researching the character of God, the more I understand my identity in Him. In fact, the more I learn, the more I want myself to reflect those same qualities back when others look at me.

One of my favorite verses that helps me understand my identity in Jesus is found in Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” It tells me that every detail about me is made exactly as it should be because I’m the “handiwork” of God and if I seek and search Him each day, He has already prepared in advance “good works” for me to do. That’s some pretty solid life instruction if you ask me.

Like I said at the beginning, history is a funny thing. We spend years either regretting it, repeating it, forgetting it or spending time trying to remember it. Regardless, we will all eventually become a part of it to our future generations. I would like to believe that many years from now when my great-, great-, great-grandchildren start researching who I was, they will be quick to see I share my mother’s eyes and my grandmother’s smile but most importantly, that I was a walking, talking, living representation of the one who influenced me the most…Jesus.

Laurie Green
Latest posts by Laurie Green (see all)