Leave Your Past Behind

By Andre Eksteen

Today I want to give you a lesson on why you must leave your past in the past. Too many people are stuck in yesterday, carrying it around like a sack of stones, and then they ask themselves why they cannot move forward. They think they are becoming stronger because they remember everything, but in reality they are only becoming tired, bitter, and broken. The past can teach you, but it can also paralyse you. You choose which one it will be.

Here in the Karoo, among the gwarrie trees and karoo bushes, there once lived a bird. He was beautiful, his song broke the silence of the veld, and everyone who saw him knew he was a special creature. But the bird had a strange habit. Every day he wrote his experiences — good or bad — on small stones. He carefully packed every memory, from joy to pain, into a little bag that he always carried with him.

At first it was a joy to him. He felt as if he were collecting a treasure, an inheritance of everything he was and had experienced. But as time went on, the little bag became heavier and heavier. His wings began to struggle, his flight dropped lower and lower. He started flying closer and closer to the ground, because the weight of those stones kept pulling him down.

One day the bird met an old owl who looked at him with wisdom and asked: “Little bird, why do you carry all these stones with you? Are you still living, or are you merely carrying yesterday’s burdens?”

But the bird did not understand. He believed that without those stones he would forget his life, and if he forgot it, it would be as if it had never happened. And so he kept carrying them, until the day came when a heavy rainstorm caused him to slip. The bag fell onto him and crushed him. His wings were broken, his breath faded, and the bird who was meant to fly high died under the weight of his own memories.

The owl found him there, and with tears in his eyes he said: “Memories are meant to guide you, not to crush you.” And now you are supper for my children.

Friends, if you listen carefully, this is exactly the lesson God gives you and me as well. The Bible says in Isaiah 43:18–19: “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”

What does this mean? God says clearly that you cannot hold on to yesterday. He is not only the God of the past; He is the God of today and tomorrow as well. If you measure your whole life by what lies behind you, you will never see the new things He is doing.

Paul writes in Philippians 3:13–14: “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

Here lies the secret: you cannot run forward if your arms are full of stones. You cannot reach your goal if you keep looking backwards. You must choose to put the bag down, leave the stones behind, and fly again.

Like that bird, you cannot carry yesterday’s burdens forever. Whether they were joy or pain, you must let them go. Because if you do not let them go, they will crush you as well. God calls you to fly lightly, to keep your eyes on Him, and to walk the road ahead without the weight of what is past.

If you want to live today, you must bury your past. For you were not made to lie under stones — you were made to fly, you were made to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ.