Embracing the Past

-What we see when we remember

By Wen Han Hui

Outside the window, Emily could bear it no longer. Gently from the other side of eternity,she called to her mother, "Oh, mommy! Please stop and look at me; talk to me."

Recently, the newly divorced Paul Keating, former Prime Minister of Australia, expressed appreciation of his ex-wife Anna when he referred to her before thousands of party members at the State Party Assembly in New South Wales. He told them that his ex-wife would always be there to greet him when he came home late at night following late meetings. She would bring him a cup of coffee, and, if he was lucky, she would sometimes give him a hug too. So the news media began to speculate that Keating might be getting back together with Anna. How funny our lives can be! When happiness comes our way, we don't really know how to appreciate it. We only begin to appreciate it or learn from it when the happiness has become history.

Embracing the past widens our vision. When our eyes have been washed clean by the tears which embracing the past bring, we see the past more clearly than we do the present. This is because when we were actually in the past it was difficult for us to understand or appreciate what was happening. We need to take time to continually go back to the past in order to appreciate what we were not able to appreciate at the time.

For instance, when a person passes away, those who had not liked him very much become more tolerant and start counting up all his good points. Can we say that these people are hypocrites? Not really! While the person is alive, the people around him or her may not be able to make a fair and objective evaluation because they cannot stand their little defects. But after the person has died it is like curtains being drawn back as their past unfolds itself before our eyes. Our eyes are brighter than they were before and our view of the dead becomes clearer. In spite of their quite obvious defects, the fact that the person has gone, along with our apparent superiority in being able to see things in retrospect, prompts us to declare quite sincerely, "Oh, what a privilege it was to have known this person!"

Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish theologian, said, "The challenge we face is that we need to understand our life backward in order to live it forward." It is not until we look backward that we can see that our life-story is made up of a kaleidoscope of different patterns but we cannot see the patterns while we are in the middle of them. This is exactly what happens to Christians who do not discover until their sufferings are over that Jesus has always been with them.

Recently I was copying our family videos from small tapes onto large tapes and I found myself watching our family's past. I saw the innocent expressions of my son Yi Wei when he was five years of age and the little chubby face of my daughter Xu Xuan who was three. There were video clips of her sitting at the dinner table imitating every movement of her brother. I saw the life of my family in past days, both the ridiculous things and the interesting ones. Then suddenly, I realised that I was embracing the past, tasting and enjoying it all. How fortunate I was to be a part of this family! and how I loved my family! But I had never felt that way a few years earlier. As I copied the videotapes, I couldn't help asking myself whether at that moment I was actually posing for some new video clips which one day would make me feel happy when I watched them.

There is a story of a little girl named Emily who died and went to Heaven. One day, the angel of death allowed Emily to live for one day in her past. The angel asked her to pick a day when she had felt the happiest. So Emily picked her 12^th birthday and decided to re-live that day. Emily's mother was busy making her a birthday cake, but Emily was disappointed because her mother did not have time to talk to her. As Emily watched the day from the other world every moment with her mother was unspeakably precious. But for her mother, this particular day was no different from any other! Outside the window, Emily could not take it any longer. She called softly to her mother from the other side of the eternity, "Oh, mom. Please stop. Look at me and talk to me. Oh, mom! I am sure you would stop doing what you're doing and chat with me if you only knew that I was going to die in a car accident tomorrow."

The time had flown and the day was almost gone. When the angel urged Emily to go back to that side of the eternity, Emily begged him, "Wait! I haven't had a chance to talk to my mom yet. Please give me one last chance." Then Emily turned around and said, "Bye-bye, mom! Bye-bye beautiful world! Bye-bye,Dad! Bye-bye pretty clothes! Oh, dear world, how beautiful you are! How sad that so many busy people cannot stop to enjoy your beauty." On her way back to eternity, she asked the angel: "Do people enjoy every moment of their lives when they are on earth?" The angel replied: "Usually not. Some of the poets and saints do, though."

There are not very many poets and saints in this world, but I believe every one of us has sensed what the poets and saints have sensed. During our long life journey, there must be moments when we see with the eyes of the saints and look on visions which ordinary people do not see. There must be moments when we sense with the spirit of poets the miracle of the plants as they flourish in the morning and wither away at evening. Like Emily, if we can snatch a short moment to experience the past, we will have touched the wisdom of poets and saints. In the Old Testament Isaac's son Jacob spent a night in the wilderness when he was trying to escape from his brother Esau. The next morning he exclaimed, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it." Likewise, many Christians have experienced setbacks and sufferings, but when they look back they all say with joy, "Oh, Jesus has walked beside me all my life."

The author is a pastor in a Chinese church in Australia.