Church, I am guilty. At twenty-seven years of age, I am guilty of wishing I could go back in time. On a consistent basis, I wish that I could be in a season where I was responsible for less. I wish I could go back to a time where the people around me all thought the same way I did. I wish I could be justified in these wishes. But I stumbled upon this verse from Ecclesiastes that cut through me.

     Ecclesiastes 7:10 says, “Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’  For it is not wise to ask such questions.”

The Teacher is giving a lesson on Wisdom and makes the assertion that it is foolish to ask why the old days were better than the current days. Even people in the ancient times struggled with nostalgia. As I mentioned before, I struggle on a regular basis with the feelings and desires to flee back to what I assume was a simpler time. I think the issue with that notion is that it assumes that ignorance is blissful. If we just could go back before we knew so much, we might be happier. I can testify that ignorance is toxic. Ignorance is miscommunication and misinformation and it rots us to our core. The only way that the old days were better than the present, is in that fact that we did not know as much. Today, we have more information flung at us and we, everyone even children, have to decipher what we believe about the information. We get into patterns of biases that help our deciphering and our decoding, but children and young people are still learning those short cuts. I think we ought to push for not short cutting the deciphering and decoding process. We, as the Church, ought to be on the forefront of critical thought. We, as the Church, should not desire to reach back to a certain decade, or any amount of time for that matter. We ought to be pushing forward and expect that God will do something even better tonight than He did this morning. Jesus claims that we will do even greater things than He did. Should we not believe that He will do even greater things in and through us today than He did yesterday?

So, yes. I am guilty of claiming that yesterday was better than today many times throughout my life. However, The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit are not the God of the Good Old Days. They are the same yesterday, today, and forever. With God’s help, I will remember to recognize the potential for today and tomorrow and seek His glory forever.

-  Sean