The Backstreet Boys are back!

Have you heard the news? The Backstreet boys have reunited and are making an album. This earth shattering news was announced on Good Morning America. It is hard to believe that their first album came out in 1996. My daughters were big fans. Often they could be found singing and dancing with their plastic microphones. I can picture them with their sweet, serious faces belting out, "I want it that way".

The Backstreet boys have sold over 130 million albums garnering them the title of best selling boys band of all time. With that type of fame, why would they want to reunite? Often when these bands who come back together they are a sad replica of their glory days. 

Maybe they have run out of money? 

Maybe they miss all of the adoring fans, screaming their names? 

Maybe they are feeling old and want to relive their glory days?

Maybe they miss each other?

Maybe they will be the ones who sound better than before?

We have a tendency to reflect on the past as the best times ever.  we all have our own glory days! These could be in our jobs, families, ministries etc. For some it is the memory of

A winning team

An amazing vacation

A most productive time

God working a blessing

Fun as a family

We hold onto those memories and make them a type of idol. Comparing everything to that event or feeling. Unfortunately we often over indulge the memory, making it better than it really was.  I was reminded of this one time as we visited an  old school that I had attended as a child.  My memory of the school was that it was this big, magnificent brick building that was easy to get lost in.  The reality was that it was a two story red brick school house. I had attached my feelings of being little and feeling lost in it to the actual size of the building. 

We do that with our glory days! We attach feelings to them and then wish things could be as they once were. There is a danger in doing this.

We can become ungrateful for what we currently have

We can get stuck in the I wish things were like they used to be syndrome

We can miss the daily blessings that God gives us

We can stop moving forward because we keep looking back.

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Philippians 3:13-15