We squeezed into our airplane seats, Ben poking eagerly at the seatback video screen. The familiar safety instructions started and I turned my gaze to the window as we rolled down the taxiway. “Your closest exit may be behind you,” the perky flight attendant reminded us. Why? Because sometimes our focus is so fixed ahead of us that we forget what lies behind. In case of emergency, it would be critical to remember to look back.

It’s the same way with history. We fear where our world is headed, and rightly so. But our grandparents lived in a time of rampant diseases, a decimated economy, the world at war, and the threat of nuclear annihilation. It must have seemed like the end of the world to them. And yet, here we are.

Being acquainted with history – corporate and personal – is necessary to gain a clear perspective on the future. If we don’t examine our past and learn from it, heal from it and resolve it, we may very well miss the door to freedom.

God repeatedly instructed the Israelites to build memorials in order to remember the great things he had done for them. The celebration of Passover was instituted so that they would remember the miraculous way he rescued them from slavery in Egypt. In the same way, Jesus instituted communion. “This do,” he said, “in remembrance of me.” So we bow our hearts over the bread and wine, remembering our rescue. Stoking our gratitude. Feasting on the memory of our freedom.

It can be hard to remember. All new things are birthed from pain, and it’s easier to keep our gaze fixed in front—to ignore the hurt, unaware that we are also denying the healing.

There is also danger in it; a temptation to wrap ourselves in what was, in fear of what could be if we step away from the comfort of familiar hurts. If they feed on us instead of fueling us, they distort our vision, instead of clearing it.

But we follow a God who gives beauty for ashes. He knows that ashes are an excellent fertilizer, and beauty blooms because it has been fed by the death that came before.

Like the wildflowers blooming by the road every summer, each year’s new life sprouts from the detritus of the years that came before. It is the old that nourishes the new, in flowers and in life. To deny it is to deny part of our very soul.

So we look back. Back into the ignorance instructing the present. Back into the pain and sorrow that seeded the life we celebrate now. Back into the thousand reasons for gratitude framing today’s blessings.

We look back to understand the future. To remember the love that rescued us. Because death feeds life in the resurrecting power of God, who causes all things to work together for good. Even the ashes. Especially the ashes.

He said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The Lord your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God.”

Joshua 4:21-24