The dawning of a New Year naturally leads to reflection on the year that has passed. It is a wise practice to pause and reflect on the ups and downs of our stories. What might God think of 2023?
I would love to be able to view the previous year from God’s perspective. Wouldn’t you? So, how can I acquire God-shaped lenses to reflect on the last year of my life?
Every year Vox releases a video of the year in review. As I watched their 2023 review, I empathized with the creators of the video. What a dark, godless world they appear to live in. In frame after frame of this progressive apocalyptic review, the viewer is bludgeoned by the hopelessness of it all. If the writer of Ecclesiastes were a 21st-century progressive agnostic, this might be how he might capture 2023. As you watch the video, note how important the voices of the commentators are. We are not merely watching history, we are watching interpreted history.
Vox is not alone in distorting the past. All of us replay in our minds a distorted version of history. Such year-end recap videos put out by conservative outlets are interpreted through their own political lens.
Should we just throw our hands up in defeat, recognizing that none of us has access to the true account? Not if we seek to refine our memories to look more like Christ’s reality.
In The End of Memory, Miroslav Volf asks thought-provoking questions. Having grown up under the violence of civil war in Eastern Europe, Volf asks what it is to have our memories shaped by Christ. He says, “The central question was how to remember rightly. And given my Christian sensibilities, my question from the start was, How should I remember abuse as a person committed to loving the wrongdoer and overcoming evil with good?”
As we thumb through scripture, we see that God often teaches his people how to remember well. Look, for instance at the song Moses and Miriam lead the Israelites in singing after they cross over the Red Sea to freedom,
“I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.
2 The Lord is my strength and my song,
and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise him,
my father's God, and I will exalt him.
3 The Lord is a man of war;
the Lord is his name.
4 “Pharaoh's chariots and his host he cast into the sea,
and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea.
5 The floods covered them;
they went down into the depths like a stone.
6 Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power,
your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy.
7 In the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries;
you send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble.
11 “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?
12 You stretched out your right hand;
the earth swallowed them.
13 “You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed;
you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode.
14 The peoples have heard; they tremble;
pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia.
17 You will bring [your people] in and plant them on your own mountain,
the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode,
the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established.
18 The Lord will reign forever and ever. (Exodus 15:1-7, 11-14, 17-18)
Moses and Miriam give us a glimpse of what it is to see history a little more like the way God sees history. To look at the past as God looks at the past isn’t to dismiss, deny, or overlook trauma and disappointment. It isn’t to sweep failure under the rug, but it is always to see the triumph and majesty of God in the forefront. It is to revel in the salvation and deliverance God has brought, to see how the glory of God is simultaneously the man of war through his breathtaking and unforeseeable rescue of his beloved chosen (which is you, too), and how God is working for the good of his people even by means of horrifically eradicating their adversary as the valiant Almighty.
This is the purpose of the Ebenezer stones God asked the Israelites to stack in so many places in Scripture: that we might not forget the glory, power, faithfulness, and goodness of our God who never forsakes us!
So let us not merely let 2023 fade into the rear-view, nor let us have it frozen in our memories shaped by our own flesh and fears, but rather let us see the hardship and the folly eclipsed by the redemption and manifest glory of our faithful God in another year where God has advanced his Kingdom and brought us ever closer to his ultimate renewal.
Photo by Moritz Knöringer on Unsplash