Acts 5:27-33 / Jn 3:31-36
Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles gives us a scene that should be quite familiar to all of us. The apostles were spreading the Good News of Jesus, that God is a loving father who never looks backward but always forward, and who wants to help people find life instead of condemning them for not finding it. That is wonderfully good news, but the high priests couldn’t hear it because they were still stuck in an argument about the past, an argument which made them so angry at the apostles that they wanted to kill them. And the tragic result of their staying stuck in the past was that they locked God out of their present.
It can happen to us all, cherishing old grievances, harboring old wounds, waiting to get even. As a wise man once said, “Harboring old grievances is like taking poison and then waiting for our enemy to get sick.” Living in the past is the surest way of locking God and everyone else out of our present, and that would be the greatest tragedy of our life.
Even when our past presses heavily upon us, there is a way of escaping it, and that is to give it to the Lord for his healing. Give it to the Lord to dispose of as he sees fit. Give it all to him, and let him help you build a new life, a life with a future that’s worth waiting for and worth working for!