Verse of the Day for January 28

Paul has just listed his credentials and then written them off. What follows is the only sentence in his letters where he says explicitly that he has not arrived.

This one thing I do: forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.

Forgetting here cannot mean amnesia. He remembers his past well enough to have catalogued it three verses earlier. It means refusing to let it set the terms of what comes next.

And what is behind includes the good parts. Paul is not only laying down his failures; he is laying down a résumé that would have impressed anyone in the room.

This one thing I do. After a life of that size, the summary is a single sentence with one verb in it.

The past that most often stops people is not shame. It is a season that went well, held up as the standard everything since has failed to match.

One thing. Reaching forward. That is the whole instruction.