Day 79: Yesterday

DAY 79

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic

A series of daily reflections for people of fait

by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland

Week Twelve – Monday 1 June 2020

Yesterday

“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away

Now it looks as though they’re here to stay,

Oh, I believe in yesterday.” - John Lennon and Paul McCartney © 1965

“How I long for the months gone by, for the days when God watched over me, when his lamp shone on my head and by his light I walked through darkness! Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God’s intimate friendship blessed my house, when the Almighty was still with me and my children were around me, when my path was drenched with cream and the rock poured out for me streams of olive oil. When I went to the gate of the city and took my seat in the public square, the young men saw me and stepped aside and the old men rose to their feet; … those who saw me spoke well of me … because I rescued the poor … I was a father to the needy; I took up the case of the stranger … People listened to me expectantly …” - Job 29.

If ever there can be found in all of Scripture an individual with a more justifiable longing for ‘yesterday’ it is Job. His losses were catastrophic – property, people – his children, and position in the community. All gone. The lament of The Beatles is the lament of Job. Like Job and the Beatles, some of our yesterdays we would like to recreate and preserve in place. Others we would like to recreate and revise. We can’t do either. Yesterday, by definition, is yesterday: beautiful or bleak – it is gone. Sorry Marty McFly – there is no “Back to the Future.”

While our losses are not as extensive and extreme as were Job’s we all, without exception, have lost the way things were before the pandemic. Paul’s response to loss? “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”- Philippians 3:13-14. Corrie ten Boom, who experienced a Job-like loss in WWII, summed it up succinctly: “In Jesus the best is always yet to come.”

Reflective question: What in your ‘yesterday’ do you need to let go of so you can focus on today?                                                                                                                                                       

Reflective Scripture: Isaiah 43:18, 19 – “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! ... I am making a way in the wilderness …” 

Reflective hymn:

“Yesterday, Today, Forever” – Albert B. Simpson (1843-1919)

Yesterday, today, forever, Jesus is the same.

All may change, but Jesus never! Glory to His name!

Glory to His name! Glory to His name!

All may change, but Jesus never! Glory to His name!