Wishing For The Past Is Not Wise

“Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this.” (Ec 7:10 AV)

 

This is something we do more frequently the older we get.  We wish for the former days because we think they were better than what we are currently enduring.  Each age and each generation has its problems.  Yes, I agree, that humanity is drifting further and further from God.  This necessarily means the world will seem like a worse place.  It will appear former days were better.  But the writer is not speaking of the general condition of the world.  Rather, he is speaking of the individual’s experience through life.  His observation is a general one as well.  For example, a young man may go off to war and is taken as a prisoner of war.  He may languish in a dark cell somewhere for decades.  Surely he can say his former days were better than his present life.  The key phrase in the above verse is, “what is the cause”.  In other words, things getting worse seems like a deliberate direction of life and the aspiration is to return to a life that one cannot have rather than enduring through the one he does have.  It is a complete waste of time to yearn for the past.  It is a waste of emotional reserve in the spirit and heart.  No one can time travel.  It is impossible.  As much as I may want to return to better days, it is impossible.  So why waste what happiness I do have in wishing for something I cannot have?

The fact there is an inquiry indicates someone occupied with these thoughts is trying to figure out how to return to better days.  Israel wandered in the wilderness because they wasted their opportunity to except their future when the LORD presented them.  They were asked to enter Canaan shortly after the exodus and declined.  They simply didn’t think God could give them victory.  So, for forty years they wandered.  They lived in the former days and were never able to leave them.  Not until that generation died off did the nation get to where the LORD wanted them to go.  This is the trap of wishing for the former days.  If we wish for them and attempt to repeat them, we will never grow into our future.  We will stay in a never-ending holding pattern.  We will be discontent no matter what we do.  We will live in the former days and then remember why they were not tolerable.  So, we will seek the former days of the former days.  Contentment is the key here.  Being where God wants you and when God wants you with peace in your heart and faith in your soul is what makes the present days as pleasant as the former used to be.  We tend to forget the struggles and trials of the former days and only remember the good times.  This is what trials tend to do.  They tend to come with enticements to escape and even though we cannot physically change our trials, we can wish for former days as a way to cope.  This is not wise.

There are both blessings and trouble that await us tomorrow.  It is not all bleak.  We can look at the direction of our nation and we can agree, that it is hastening its distance from God.  In the past few decades, our great country has accelerated its apostasy.  In a not too distant past, the lines between right and wrong were blurred.  Then they were erased altogether.  Now, new lines are being drawn.  What was once wrong is now right and what was right is now wrong.  The former days are better.  In a way.  What we do know is the further from God mankind gets, the closer we are to His return.  The future days will be better than the present days and the former days combined!  This is how we need to react to our present days.  We are foolish to wish for days to which we cannot travel.  We are wise to wish for days that will eventually come.  There will come a day want the clouds will part.  We will either graduate to glory, or the LORD will come back.  Either way, our present days are only temporary and there are far better days coming.