It’s Monday and you are making your usual commute to work or school. As you continue on your usual trek, you look and notice a car slightly ahead of you weaving in and out of the lane.
As you watch amazed, the car continues swerving to avoid collisions with the cars next to it.
You think, What is wrong with this person?
As you quickly attempt to pass, you notice the driver hunched in the front with eyes focused on the rearview mirror without attention to the road ahead.
As you pass, the last thought in your head is, How can a person who constantly looks in the rearview be fit to drive.
Jesus thought the same.
Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” – Luke 9:62
Jesus told this parable to his disciples, but what does it mean?
The farmer, in the parable, must plow in straight lines to make his work straight, but if he looks back and attempts to complete his task, all of his hard work is ruined. The farmer must focus his gaze ahead to complete the work he set out to do.
Have you felt like this farmer before? You may be called for greater challenges, but looking in the past has blocked your vision of the path ahead.
We are constantly called to look ahead by God, but we can’t stop letting the past hold our attention.
He may call us for a certain ministry, but doubt based on past failures can be in the rearview. Regret from missed opportunities can be holding us still.
“Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you.”- Proverbs 4:25.
If we want to live the lives that God has set for us, we must let the past only be an indicator of how far we have come and continue to maintain a gaze ahead. What he has for our future will be incomparable to what we left behind in the past.
Graceful Strides 