Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Forward

I hadn't really thought much about the word, forward, until I read it regarding Ariel Sharon. He's the former Prime Minister of Israel who has been in a coma for seven years, and established the Kadima party before suffering his massive stroke. Kadima is forward in Hebrew. President Obama used Forward in his recent campaign, and I've heard it from friend and foe alike. My daughter has stated more than once, recently that "forward is the only direction we have."

The idea of moving always made sense to me, but I hadn't really considered forward to be the only direction, much less such a popular one. I guess as a mother, grandma, and minister, I've been hesitant at the idea of leaving anyone out and I somehow in my thinking, being left out, even by choice, was being left behind . . . It was in realizing waiting for someone who doesn't want to be included keeps me from moving forward and still doesn't change their choice. So many passages in Scripture these past couple of weeks have been confirming what I just wasn't quite ready to see. Letting go of the past isn't the same thing as leaving someone out, but not letting go certainly impedes the forward motion, and greatly impacts any opportunity to gain momentum.

Not moving forward means one of two things. Either we are standing still, which is stagnation, or worse, spinning our wheels and grinding our gears, digging the hole deeper; or we are moving backward, at that is not only losing ground, but the opposite of forward. As far as I can understand Scripture, the G-d of Israel doesn't appear to have a reverse gear. He doesn't move backward and when He moves, He moves big! I have read about situations in which He doesn't "go with" the presumptuous, but still no stagnation and no backward. It's taken some maturity on my part and receiving wisdom from on High, to realize it isn't so much waiting on folks that aren't choosing to move forward, as much as it, is not wanting to move on without those folks.

The only way to move forward is to let go of the past, and sometimes it's hard to let go of the people who live there.

But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. Torah of Holy Scripture

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