Walking Distance

“Do not say, “Why were the former days better than these?”

    For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”

-Ecclesiastes 7:10

“Do not remember the former things

    or consider the things of old.

I am about to do a new thing;

    now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness

    and rivers in the desert.”

-Isaiah 43:18-19

For our final journey into The Twilight Zone, I want to explore something that every church I’ve served needs to hear: Our best days are not behind us. God has a future for us. We haven’t already experienced all the goodness that God has to offer.

In “Walking Distance,” Martin Sloan is a 36-year-old advertising executive who is capital-S Stressed, and he is wearing it all over his face. Seriously, as a 39-year-old myself, this man is a rough 36.

While his car is being serviced near his hometown, Martin decides to walk over and look around. Of course, this being The Twilight Zone, he discovers that he has walked a mile and a half and 25 years into the past--straight into his own childhood. Everything is exactly as he remembers it.

Eventually, Martin encounters his younger self and his parents, who are understandably alarmed by a grown man claiming to be their son. His father eventually realizes that Martin is telling the truth and gently urges him to return to his own life. There is goodness ahead of him, too, if he will look for it.

Nostalgia is one of our strongest and most intoxicating feelings. At its best, it connects us to our past and reminds us of people and experiences that shaped us. At its worst, it clouds the present with the nagging conviction that everything worthwhile has already happened. We can become so occupied with remembering a good life that we forget to live one.

Ecclesiastes challenges our assumption that the former days were necessarily better. Isaiah takes the invitation further. Speaking to a people living with the devastation of exile, the prophet announces that God is doing something new.

These people had good reasons to grieve the past. They had lost homes, familiar places of worship, and the life they understood. God’s promise meets them in that loss. The God who once made a way through the sea would now make a way through the wilderness. Their history with God gave them reason to trust that God could act again, even differently.

That matters for the church. We cherish memories of full Sunday School classrooms, beloved pastors, and traditions that formed us. Those memories can give us courage for what comes next. But when recreating them becomes our whole purpose, we may miss the people God is inviting us to love today.

God’s faithfulness doesn’t guarantee that next year’s attendance will break records or that the budget will cease to be a concern. But it does give us reason to expect that grace, meaningful work, and new relationships remain possible.

The same is true in our own lives. Friendships change. Children grow. Our abilities and responsibilities shift. We can grieve what has ended while remaining open to goodness we haven’t yet experienced.

So perhaps we can ask ourselves: Where am I so intent on recovering what was that I’m overlooking what God is doing now?

We can give thanks for yesterday and still make room for tomorrow. God is already there.


Rev. Ryan Young