Get Real November 23 Devotional
November 23, 2024
2 CHRONICLES 34:20-21 | 20 Then the king commanded Hilkiah, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Abdon son of Micah, the secretary Shaphan, and the king’s servant Asaiah: 21 “Go, inquire of the Lord for me and for those who are left in Israel and in Judah, concerning the words of the book that has been found; for the wrath of the Lord that is poured out on us is great, because our ancestors did not keep the word of the Lord, to act in accordance with all that is written in this book.”
The past is more than a prelude to the present. It is also a corrective. All of us, to some extent, are enculturated. We don’t see all the assumptions that are tacit or implicit in our own setting. Josiah did not see the syncretism of his own day clearly until a book emerged from the era of Moses. Only then did he escape the tyranny of his own present, through the perspective of a previous generation!
One lesson our age resists, because of its attraction to progressive narratives, is that there have been decisive moments of understanding and revelation in the past that we forget at our peril. History is not on an unending and inevitable advance, at least not in its moral development. There are fits and starts, advances, and retreats. Our current age is not the culmination of all previous generations.
What is your perspective on the relationship between past and present?
