“Yesterday Is All that Does Count”: Why the Past Never Goes Away
At some point, everyone wants to believe we can start new and leave yesterday behind—but we never do and we never will
At some point, everyone wants a year zero.
Everyone wants to believe they can start new and leave yesterday behind.
The French Legislative Assembly tried it when they declared 1792 to be the first year of a new republic in which the Ancien Régime would be remembered no more. Pol Pot decreed 1975 to be the genesis of Year Zero for Cambodia. A year later, the musical midwives at the birth of punk rock made a similar claim, deluding themselves into thinking they could create a new musical form utterly disconnected from generations past.
And yet, France’s new republic could not escape the trappings of an empire, Pol Pot walked the same horrific paths that previous Marxist dictators had slickened with the blood of those that opposed them, and punk rock was little more than the same chords that had launched rock and roll two decades before played with more volume and more vulgarity.
They all thought they could build a new today by wiping away the yesterdays.
But they couldn’t.
I’ve seen a similar pattern in church planting. “I’m going to start a brand new church that leaves the old traditions behind,” the young church planter declares. “We’re going to do what’s in the Bible, nothing more.” And then, marriages happen and children begin to be born and relationships hit the rocks and people struggle to find deep roots for their faith—and, suddenly, the church develops habits that look an awful lot like the traditions of the churches that they once derided. The church that claimed it would never have traditions somehow ends up with liturgies and Sunday School classes and committee votes and business meetings.
Everyone eventually draws from the yesterdays that came before them.
The question isn’t whether or not we will build on the past. The only questions are whether we’re drawing from the right yesterdays and whether we know which yesterdays we’re drawing from.
Cormac McCarthy summarizes this reality beautifully in No Country for Old Men:
You dont start over. … Ever step you take is forever. You cant make it go away. None of it. You understand what I’m sayin? … You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else. You might think you could run away and change your name and I dont know what all. Start over. And then one mornin you wake up and look at the ceilin and guess who’s layin there?
“Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of.”
None of us is able to start over from nothing.
And yet, we try.
Why?
I suspect it’s because because we yearn for what God alone is able to do, and we want to do it on our own terms.
God alone can give a new beginning. And yet, he does so on his terms, in his time, in his way.
Our God doesn’t remove the past; he redeems it.
His redemption doesn’t wipe away the pain; it wipes away the tears.
And he doesn’t do this by acting like the pain of the past isn’t there; he does it by taking the pain of the past on himself in Christ.
Your life today is no less than the result of all your days that came before, but it’s so much more. In Christ, your life today is the result of all of his days too.
The day of his baptism when the Father declared, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased.”
The day of his death when our Father’s wrath was poured out until there was no more.
The day of his resurrection when his flesh was glorified—as yours also will be, in him.
“Yesterday is all that does count.”
But it’s not your yesterdays that count the most.
It’s his.