Each year, as New Year’s Day arrives, believers wrestle quietly with one of the Apostle Paul’s most puzzling assertions: “One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal” (Phil 3:13-14).
How—exactly—is it possible to “forget what lies behind”?
The year just lived was full of slights and insults: they fester unforgettably each time that face or name appears.
The year just past brought wounds—both planned and unintentional. Can willing it remove the evidence of scars?
The year gone by saw failures—ours and others—whose effects cannot be trimmed by noting January 1. Will the famed power of positive thinking erase the pain of choices we or others made?
We only can forget what we’ve forgiven—done by us, or done by others. And we only can forgive when we’re forgiven—by a power outside ourselves who cannot lie. God “never changes or casts a shifting shadow” (James 1:17).
“God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them” (2 Cor 5:19).
What God forgets, we safely can forget. When God forgives, we find His grace to add our own, releasing others and ourselves from all of last year’s failures.
Grace doesn’t simply turn the page. It sees, acknowledges, forgives—and gradually forgets. The year ahead will help us practice our forgetting.
So stay in grace. -Bill Knott
ANSWERING THE QUESTION (January 21, 2022)
FIXING WHAT’S BROKEN (January 14, 2022)
UNRESOLVED (January 07, 2022)
GENERATIONS OF GRACE (December 31, 2021)
COME ALL, COME NOW (December 24, 2021)
THE WISDOM OF GRACE (December 17, 2021)
ROOM AT THE INN (December 10, 2021)
THE SONG THAT MUST BE SUNG (December 03, 2021)
SIMPLE GIFTS (Novembre 26, 2021)
A PRESENT HELP (November 19, 2021)
LOOKING FOR SAFE (November 12, 2021)
TRUSTWORTHY NEWS (November 05, 2021)
THE MEASURE OF FORGIVENESS (October 29, 2021)
GRACE AND TRUTH (October 22, 2021)
GRACE AND SILENCE (October 15, 2021)
PERSISTENT GRACE (October 08, 2021)
UNSTOPPABLE (October 01, 2021)
ALWAYS ON MY MIND (September 24, 2021)
REGIFTING GRACE (September 17, 2021)
THE ORIGIN OF FORGIVENESS (September 10, 2021)
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