“I will forgive their iniquity and will remember their sins no more.”
Jeremiah 31:34
A London journalist had the special opportunity to go for a walk with the former prime minister of Great Britain, Mr. David Lloyd George. As they walked through fields where cattle were grazing, the journalist became so eager to record every word of Mr. Lloyd George that he left a gate open. When Mr. Lloyd George noticed it, he walked back and closed the gate.
As they continued their walk, Mr. Lloyd George reminisced about an old doctor who passed away. “When he lay dying,” he said, “he called his sons and daughters to his bedside and urged them, as they went through life, to close every gate through which they passed.” Mr. Lloyd George told the journalist that he benefitted greatly from that advice.
Just as the cattle in the field had no business straying through the gate into another field, so there are things in our past which should not wander with us into the next field. We need to shut the gate behind us.
We have all gone through many painful times. But we can continue to carry the guilt, the regret, the trauma, and the loss with us. The past, however, is gone, and we need to move on.
Are you closing the gates behind you? If not, the Lord wants to speak to you. Do you know what the Almighty God sees when he looks upon your past? Nothing. He erased it. “I will remember their sins no more.”
God doesn’t care where you’ve been; he cares about where you are now, and where you’re going.
Shutting the gate behind us means we can enter each field and make a new start. That’s what “Easy Eddie” Eddie did. He was a lawyer who worked for Al Capone. Through this, and other mob activities, he became a wealthy man.
But “Easy Eddie” had a son, “Butch,” who wanted to enroll in the Naval Academy. It was time to come clean for the sake of his son. “Easy Eddie” informed to Frank Wilson, a federal investigator, and helped send Capone to Alcatraz. “Easy Eddie” was later gunned down in west Chicago.
His son, Butch, became a flyboy and the first aviator to be awarded the Medal of Honor.
You remember Butch O’Hare because the busiest airport in America has been named after him. But you should also remember that he became what he did because his dad decided to close the gate behind him, and start a new day.
(copyright 2012 by climbinghigher.org and by Marty Kaarre)