Followship

This Sunday our reading from the Gospel was Luke 9:57-62. This passage includes the "no place to rest", "let the dead bury the dead", and the instruction to not look back. Our Bishop emphasized not looking back on the old days as being somehow "glorified", "remembered better than now", and held in high esteem, because, basically, the best is yet to come.
While I do believe that our past has some worth to it, thinking of our personal past too fondly and too often, can indeed keep our eyes off the prize--the prize of eternal salvation.
Loving and believing in Christ is not something we make a commitment to do and then put on a shelf somewhere. (with our Bible perhaps? to be taken out on Sundays when we feel like going to church?) Maybe we feel in this belief that this commitment is enough for all time, because in our hearts we "know" we will keep the promise. Yet imagine saying to your child, your spouse, your parent, your sibling, I love you for all time, then going about your life thinking of yourself and maybe the "other" 10-15 minutes a day max. If life is all about YOU, then there is little room for anyone else, including Christ.
The promise to love and follow Christ, the call to "followship" as our Bishop referred to it on Sunday, is a promise that you are in Christ and Christ in you, all the time, no matter what, 24/7.
While the repository of truth, our Holy Bible, records and remembers the past life of saints and sinners, and serves us as a guide to life, it is the LIVING WORD in us, as believers, that calls us to the life.
There is definitely teachings in our personal past and in the past of Christ as He walked on earth to be valued and cherished. BUT this IS the day the Lord has made and we SHOULD rejoice and be glad in it. And along with this happiness for today, love the Lord and open your heart, not just Sunday, not yesterday, just now and don't look back.
Sometimes the path will seem impossible. Sometimes life will feel lonely. BUT, we are not alone, we have the love always there, and when we give it back we will feel the one thing denied to Christ on earth, Peace and Comfort. It's why He died--to give this to us.