And you shall make response before the Lord your God, “A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders.” Deuteronomy 26:5-8
In his essay “On Stories,” C. S. Lewis wrote, “Dangers, of course, there must be; how else can you keep a story going?”
The harshness, humiliation, hard labor, affliction, toil and oppression – the biblical language is bluntly realistic – all these painful things in our stories are not to be suppressed. We are not to “get over it and move on,” as some say. That misses the point. Remembering the past, including the hard parts, is part of our confession of faith.
Don’t be afraid to face how you have been sinned against. God is redeeming those very parts of your story with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.
God does not trivialize your sufferings. He hallows them. Remembered in this way, your past is lifted up and dignified. In fact, it will take eternity to see and to share the wonderful stories of redemption God is telling through us all.
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