Old Ways

October 29, 2017

“New and Improved!” How often have we read these words on everything from a box of cereal to an ad for a new car? We Americans are infatuated with “new,” and with good reason. Whether it’s in medicine, technology, research, or manufacturing, innovation has improved so many facets of our daily lives that we almost instinctively believe that anything new has to be better. Not necessarily.

I have to be careful here. I’m of an age that if I grouse about new ways of doing things, people will just think I’m a crotchety old man. That doesn’t particularly bother me; there’s probably a certain amount of truth to it. The fact is, I like new. For example, I love much of the new worship music. But I also like old, like the swing and jazz music of the ‘40’s. I guess I had better like old; after all, old is where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.

Last weekend, the Hallmark channel launched this year’s round of sappy Christmas specials. I’m not being critical. It’s true; they’re sappy. But right now, I prefer them to the ghoulish and gory Halloween fare. If there’s one thing Hallmark is known for, it’s nostalgia. Nostalgia is big business. We naturally hark back to what seem to us simpler times. We forget that simple tends to be whenever we were young. What were simpler times for me were times of struggle, worry, and challenge for my parents. Their nostalgia looked back to the twenties and thirties when they were young.

Jeremiah 6:16 says, “Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it. Then you will find rest for your souls.” This is not nostalgia. Jeremiah was living in a time of national crisis. The moral, political, and spiritual state of the nation was in collapse; before his death, Israel will have ceased to exist as a nation. He is hoping his hearers will take a sober look at life and consider where they went astray. The path they were presently on was leading to destruction; “There is a path that leads to soul rest,” he says. It’s an old path, almost abandoned, so hidden by the overgrowth that if you don’t ask for directions, you’ll not be able to find it. But it’s a good way. 

In just two months, people will be oohing and ahhing over new things found under their Christmas trees, things that will never put their souls to rest. But there is an old path that leads there. It even has a name. Jesus said, “I am the Way…” I am thankful tonight to have found that Way, and the peace at the end of it.