“Time,’ The Captain said, “is not what you think.” He sat down next to Eddie. “Dying… It’s not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning.”

Eddie looked lost.

” I figure it’s like in the Bible, the Adam and Eve deal?” the Captain said.
“Adam’s first night on earth? When he lays down to sleep? He thinks its all over, right? He doesn’t know what sleep is. His eyes are closing and he thinks he’s leaving this world, right? Only he isn’t. He wakes up the next morning and he has a fresh new world to work with. But he has something else too.

He has his yesterday.”

(Extract from ‘The Five People you meet in Heaven’ by Mitch Albom)

Jon read this passage to me recently and it got me thinking about the truth this author hits upon. We are not just given today. We are given the experiences, joys and sorrows of all our yesterdays too. The mistakes, mundaneness, miracles, mayhem and mercies of our past all form together in some crazy ball of tangledness to constantly recalibrate our thinking (rightly or wrongly) about the now and the future.

What is in your yesterday that holds you back? What is in your yesterday that propels you forward?

This week I have had two highly significant conversations. One with my oldest male friend (whom I have known deeply for 20 years.) In it, he dared to tread on some of the rubble of my life and try to work out why certain things have collapsed in me…

The other was with Jon last night when we talked for hours about our hopes and dreams for our marriage and our family.

I feel certain that my yesterdays – those that bring me immense pain to recall – and those that have the heady fragrance of joy about them, are both meant to inform my NOW and help me dream God’s dreams for my future.

But, like you, I need to be good at spotting the imposters in the crowd. There are some things that look and feel and sound like they are good for us. But actually they are not God’s best.

When Mary and Martha greet Jesus in John 11 and say to him , “Lord if you had been here, our brother would not have died..’ what they are really saying is this: ‘You should have been here for us! You weren’t were you?’

But actually whenever we say this to our Father about anything, He has the right to say, because it is eternally true, that He was very present.

I imagined Him speaking to me today, “I am outside of Time as you know it. To me a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. There is no yesterday or today with me my child. For I am the same as I ever was. I am the same God who revealed Himself to Moses in the fire. I am the same God who promised Abraham as many children as galaxies, I am the same God who parted seas and told weather to be calmed. I am the same God who chose birds to feed my servant, and servants to feed my lambs, who turned water into blood, and water into wine. I am that same God…. and yet I am constantly doing a new thing in you and with you…”

I’m praying today for you as you read this, that you are given the mind of Christ and the eyes of His beautiful Spirit to know what your yesterdays mean for you today.

But I know this: He was there.