Walking Backwards Into The Future
Looking ahead into the future, eyes scanning the horizon for opportunity as well as certainty. It’s a nice picture.
But the truth is:
You are walking backwards into the future… and so am I.
One of my best friends is moving at the end of this week back to her hometown. It’s unexpected timing and unexpected circumstances.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it? The unexpected?
As we’ve processed her family’s transition she said this to me last week:
“I wish I could be stepping confidently into the future with certainty, but I’ve come to realize that I am taking one step at a time, walking backwards into the future.”
She had heard recently that the Hebrew people, the group whose story a majority of the Bible follow, thought of time much differently than we tend to in the Western cultures many of us are a part of.
They were more realistic about a fact that we know is true even though we don’t act like it:
We can’t see into the future.
But the picture they have for stepping into this unknown future isn’t someone stumbling towards darkness with their hands out in front of them trying to grasp something they can’t see.
It’s quite the opposite.
It’s of a steady walk with their back facing the unknown future and their face towards the past. As they look back they are peering into the faithfulness of a God who has brought them this far.
Jewish writers Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger put it this way:
“The Jewish backward-gazing forward march is a metaphor for human life in general. To pick a modern image we once heard, but can’t remember where: life is like driving a car with its front window opaque. All you have to go by are your rearview mirrors. This is how we are all destined to drive.”1
Even looking for God’s movement is an effort towards looking into the past, even if the past was just seconds ago.
Looking at God’s movement from the beginning of God’s story right up until the moment you just exhaled. Letting that guide you, rather than an unknown future.
Sounds beautiful in a way doesn’t it?
Beautiful… but I hate it.
Life would be so much easier if I could see into the future. If I could even just know what this next season would bring I would be so much more prepared! I don’t want to live in this poetic “back-ward gazing forward march”!
It’s more like I am stumbling backwards straining my neck from side to side trying to look over my shoulder in a panic!
Am I going to have the finances to step into what I feel called to?
Is my long distance relationship ever going to be closer distance rather than grow longer?
What is the reason for some of the difficulty I have faced recently?
Why do people I love need to leave in this season?
It’s in the middle of my rants, as I spit questions like these at God, that the reply is clear.
“You need to trust me”.
I realize that I can’t really be trusted with my own future in the first place. Gently God takes my face and helps me look back at the faithfulness God has shown me up until this point.
Comforting me through the loss of my dad.
Healing a majority of my chronic pain.
Led me to be a part of leading a wonderful church community.
Miraculously providing finances to buy and invest in two community houses in the city.
The list could go on.
When I actually see God moving as I go through the day, it’s NOT because I’m straining my neck to look forward into a future what is dim and futile to even squint my eyes to see.
It’s when I see what just happened and think, I bet that was God’s leading! Or I think about what I saw earlier today and I step towards it to see God move again!
We are all walking backwards into the future.
Will we fix our eyes on God’s faithfulness and let that be our guide?
Or strain our necks to peer unnecessarily into the unknown future?
Each day I have been making the choice – one step at a time… walking backwards into the future.
1. Oz, Amos; Oz-Salzberger, Fania (2012-11-05). Jews and Words (Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization) (p. 119). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.