I'M GLAD to see you're back to your old self!" It's a well-meaning comment. A friend may have recovered from an illness or brightened up after some other struggle. But if we consider those words more deeply, we might ask ourselves if this is the best we can look for in others—that they return to what they were before. Should we commend a return to a past state? The Bible represents God as saying: "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?" Isa. 43:18, 19.
Good comes from God and is perpetual.
We tend to view human experience in a linear way. We observe beginnings, maturing, and demise. We see a past, present, and future. Looking for a systematic way to catalog our lives, we use chronology, mentally arranging events in order of their occurrence.
