“Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days

Sometimes it feels like this world's gone crazy

Grandpa, take me back to yesterday

When the line between right and wrong

Didn't seem so hazy”

So goes the lines of the song by the Judds (1985). We often can look back and think about “the good old days.” But there is another song by John Conlee that croons:

“These rose colored glasses

That I'm looking through

Show only the beauty

'Cause they hide all the truth”

The wise King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 7:10, “Do not say, “Why were the former days better than these?” For you do not inquire wisely concerning this.”

You see, God’s promises for us are not for the past. They are to give us “a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11).  God even goes so far as to say, “Now the just shall live by faith; but if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him.” (Hebrews 10:38) The Israelites got into trouble, not because they were traveling toward the promised land, but because they kept looking back to Egypt. 

What God has started in us is only the beginning – the seed. God is the God of increase. He always makes things better - going from glory to glory. We tend to look at what is going on and think that is all we have to look forward to, but God has already spoken the end into being. “I have declared the former things from the beginning; They went forth from My mouth, and I caused them to hear it. Suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.” (Isaiah 48:3) 

In the passage of Isaiah 48:5-6, God talks about how He spoke things first because otherwise we would say our idols did it – those things we have faith in like our doctor, our job, our plan. Or maybe we would just say “Of course I knew that.” God will not share His glory with anyone or anything. He just wants us to trust Him and rest in the fact that “all things work together for good” because He has spoken our future into existence and it is full of hope.

“If you would earnestly seek God And make your supplication to the Almighty, If you were pure and upright, Surely now He would awake for you, And prosper your rightful dwelling place. Though your beginning was small, Yet your latter end would increase abundantly.” (Job 8:5-7)

God’s plan and purpose is never for us to continue to look back and dream about “the good old days.” We remember and are grateful, but we look forward with expectation. “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

His plan is for us to look forward into our present and future and see the good He has in store for us – in the present eternity.