My daughter slept on the couch. Curls framed a little round face, all that stuck out from her blanket. Her rhythmic breathing only occasionally interrupted as she shifted positions. A long weekend of interrupted and inconsistent sleep schedules had her sleeping later than usual.
As I enjoyed the quiet and waited for her to wake, I entertained myself with a game and a cup of coffee. I let the morning slip by in restful quiet.
It was quite peaceful until I looked at my phone to see what time it was.
At four minutes past the hour, I was four minutes late for an appointment roughly thirty-five minutes away. My heart raced and sank simultaneously, and I grabbed my phone.
While my instructor was understanding and happy to reschedule, I struggled with guilt over the lapse in awareness for the rest of the day.
Later, as I sat at a friend’s house enjoying company, my phone rang. The church I have been teaching at on Wednesday nights was calling.
“Hello?”
“David, did I forget to ask you to teach this week?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh. I’ve just been so busy, and I guess I just assumed you were coming because you started that series.”
“I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard anything, and I wasn’t sure if you all had something going on special this week or what.”
“No. I just thought I had called but got busy and just didn’t. I’ve just got so much going on.”
As the lead deacon of a church between ministers, the volunteer music minister, and a husband whose wife is battling cancer, I think he understated his workload. Unless otherwise informed, we agreed to forego the weekly invitation and just plan on my teaching.
It seemed to be a good day for forgetting.
I must admit, I typically think of forgetting as a bad thing. My forgetfulness typically brings frustration, shame, guilt, or embarrassment, while I worry about the frustration it is causing others. When others forget, I fear they will either feel bad about forgetting or frustrated that I did not intuit what was expected.
When I fail to recall memories of years past, I feel like I have lost something, and I strive all the harder to create lasting memories in the here and now. It always seems to be pleasant memories that slip away while negative ones nag at me constantly.
I do not usually enjoy forgetting, yet that is exactly what Paul tells us to do in Philippians 3:13-14.
“Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13-14 ESV – Bible Gateway
Paul is writing to the Philippians to thank them for their gifts, encourage them for their faithfulness, and exhort them towards unity. The letter of Philippians gives us a picture of what Christian maturity should look like.
Christian maturity or being conformed to the likeness of Christ is what the term “sanctification” refers to. In verse 10 of the same chapter, Paul identifies the process of sanctification as knowing Christ, experiencing the power of His resurrection, sharing with Him in His sufferings, and becoming like Him in His death.
In verse 12, Paul shortens this to becoming “perfect.”
Paul says this perfection or likeness with Christ is what he does not consider to have made his own. Yet, Paul says he forgets what is behind and reaches, strives, or presses on toward his goal.
I believe this verse stands out for what it does not say.
Paul does not tell us to forget where we failed.
Rather, we are told to forget “what lies behind.” The past is in the past, good, bad, or indifferent; let it go. Begin each day, each moment, every breath, with a focus on what comes next.
I once heard a speaker say we must “simply do the next right thing.”
Yesterday’s victories will not see us through today’s challenges. Yesterday’s failures are covered by the blood of Jesus and long forgotten. With each new moment, we reach for and press on toward the call of God to become more and more like Christ.
While Paul is not advocating a literal state of forgetfulness, He is highlighting the vitality of approaching the present as something new. The Greek word used here for “forgetting” means to intentionally lose out of mind or neglect.
We cannot rely on the past, who we have been, where we have gone, or what we have accomplished. Likewise, we must not allow our past, who we have been, and the things we have done, to hold us back.
Each step of our race must be run. We cannot expect “momentum” to carry us or allow the weight of our past to slow us. We must press on as though we have forgotten every step before and keep our eyes fixed on the goal.
This picture of a life saturated with grace and humility and laser-focused on purpose is Paul’s image of Christian maturity.
Not that I think I have been able to accomplish this yet, but by letting go of everything else, I keep pushing on toward the goal.