While we can learn valuable things looking into our past in learning from our failures too often that can consume a lot of time digging into the details that may or may not contribute to improving our future. The Negatives of the past often overshadow our lives – we have to work to realize that our past is now a TRUTH. It cannot be changed, it is not flexible or open for opinion. The Good News in it for us is that this translation from Isaiah on “former things” and “dwelling on the past” cover things back In our past as well as recent failures we may have experienced. God asks Isaiah to take his past as a Truth but to know it is overshadowed by the Truth of today in the new things God is doing in his life. We try to teach our youth that the past can’t be changed and can only be managed by how we let it affect our future path. In baseball and strike is a strike and in 100 years when the scorebook is found in the dusty corner of a dugout it will still be a strike. While the call cannot be changed and is now a part of the Truth in life it has no power over the future of a hitter or pitcher.

We strive to realize that our past only controls us when we stay stuck in it and not come to a point of understanding it as a learning point:

• You cannot change your past, but you can change how you react to it.
• You are much wiser now based on the knowledge our past brings to us.
• You are not the same person you used to be, so you do not have to make the same mistakes you once made.

What can always be of value, is looking at our past from the view point of neither success or failure but from a perspective of how have we lived and treated others. When we leave this life the only measure that will hold up and prevail over time is how we treated others – did we help and love our neighbors, family and friends.  Were our decisions and actions with others ethical and moral and would they be pleasing to God. More importantly do we truly believe in Faith that God is always working on a new beginning and can we see it, can we see the way he is making for us in the wilderness of our day to day world.