By T. Scott Burgess

(Canastota, NY) I loved the new Pixar movie, “Toy Story 3.” I am not ashamed to say I got a little teary-eyed at the end of the film. It spoke a lot to me about where I am in my life.  There have been things that I have loved doing the past nine years at my current place of employment and in my life, but there is a whole world ahead for me in the future. No, I don’t have Buzz and Woody dolls of which I need to let go, but I have plenty of other areas which I need to surrender, or give back, to God. The time has come to just let go.

The past few months have not been the easiest. A lot has changed in my life and will continue to change for the next few months. This is a time of transition for me, throughout which I have been thinking back over the past nine years and what has happened during this period of my life. I have had a lot of joys, but I have also had some less than stellar moments. I got into a serious conversation with my mother about some of those moments, and she told me that sometimes we just need to let go of the past. After all, Christ no longer remembers or holds our sins against us once we repent (Psalm 103:12; Jeremiah 31:34; Hebrews 8:12, 10:17). So why do we insist on holding on to the hurt and pain those mistakes caused us?

After my conversation with my mother, I began to meditate on the passage in the Bible regarding Lot’s wife (Genesis 19:1-26). Lot was living in the city of Sodom, where sin and corruption were all around. The Lord sent two angels to Lot, who told him to gather his family and leave that place without looking back at the land they were leaving behind lest they be consumed. When Lot hesitated, the angels led Lot, his wife, and their two daughters out of the city; but, in the course of departing, Lot’s wife looked back and became a pillar of salt. While this is not the most encouraging story at all, an important lesson is to be learned from it. When we fail to look forward and continue to look back, we allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the past (Philippians 3:13-14).

It is like a runner or walker who keeps turning around. Have you ever seen someone try to run backwards on a treadmill? They cannot do it for long because it is very disorienting, and they do not get the same kind of workout they would from facing forward in the right direction. Running backwards is not the way our bodies were intended to run. Neither were our beings intended to stay stuck in the past by constantly looking backwards.

I believe that sometimes we fail to let go because we feel like we will lose a piece of ourselves or that we will not know how to function without hurt. But the Bible says, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” or freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17). God does not intend for us to be crippled by the pain of the past. Instead, he wants us to be free from those hurts and the pain that he never intended for us to have. Letting go does not mean we lose our identity. Instead, to me, it means we are actually free to grow and become who God created us to be all along.

T. Scott Burgess is Youth and Young Adult Leader at Hope Christian Fellowship in Canastota.

By T. Scott Burgess

I have been writing about the “Lost” series finale for the past few weeks and realizing that there is so much to think about and be challenged by.  I was having a difficult time figuring out how to wrap up my series on “Lost” when I heard a song while driving my car. Carole King is arguably one of the best singer-songwriters of the last fifty years. A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of going to hear her and James Taylor in concert. King wrote a song that challenges our thinking: “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” In the song, she states: “I’d like to know that your love is love I can be sure of…”

As I was reflecting on “Lost” the television series instead of “Lost” the series finale, that theme began pulsating in my head.  The characters were flawed people: they made mistakes; they were selfish at times; they put other characters lives at risk; some were just downright evil; and so forth. This got me thinking about how, because we are flawed, our expectation is that others will let us down or stop loving us. Indeed, because of our flaws, we are not sure of most love.

However, a theme that “Lost” tapped into repeatedly was the notion of redemption. That is to say, despite our flaws, we can be loved, we can be forgiven and there can be restoration to our relationships with God and others.  Last year, one of my friends betrayed a confidence of mine. Our relationship has not been the same.  He has recently apologized to me, and I said to another one of my friends:  “Isn’t restoration of our friendship the point?”  I think I should have replaced the word restoration with redemption.

Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that we are all flawed and, ultimately, the only love that we can be sure of is the love of God because “God is love” (I John 4:8).

We are redeemed in our relationship with God because of his mercy. We are redeemed in our relationships with others because of mercy. “O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good:  for his mercy endures forever.  Let the redeemed of the Lord say so” (Psalm 107:1-2).

I have been contemplating the idea of God’s unconditional love and forgiveness. I am challenged to love others as God has loved me. “Lost” was a phenomenon and evoked passion in many people, because we can see our lives reflected in the characters. True, most of us will never live on an island with a smoke monster and a hatch that has to be reset every 108 minutes, or see people that never age. We will, however, have relationships that challenge us; struggle with our questions of forgiveness, mercy, and redemption; and have questions about logic and faith.

We can also learn from “Lost” that people matter, there is meaning to our lives, and the love of a Father is incomparable. Whether or not we have the love of an earthly father who can give us direction, we can be sure of the love of our heavenly Father, with whom there is no change or shadow of turning (James 1:17).

T. Scott Burgess is Youth and Young Adult Leader at Hope Christian Fellowship in Canastota

By T. Scott Burgess

Last week, I began a three-part series regarding the finale of the television program “Lost.”  It says and means different things to various people, whether believers or non-believers and faithful or casual viewers.

At our church’s midweek Bible study, we recently got into a heavy discussion regarding different perceptions of heaven and the afterlife. We specifically used Revelation 21:1-8 as a framework for trying to understand what heaven is like. The language of the book of Revelation is very figurative and symbolic, often resulting in more questions than answers due to our limited understanding of what God exactly meant by many of the things he inspired the Apostle John to write (Revelation 1:1, 19).  Having said that, one question that arose was, “What are we most looking forward to in heaven?” One answer that came up repeatedly was that people were most looking forward to seeing their dearly departed loved ones again.

“Lost” beautifully (although who knows how accurately) captured this theme of longing to be reunited with those we loved and with whom we spent time in this life. People who only watched the finale probably did not feel the same emotional effect as people who faithfully watched the series for six years. I began to feel sad while preparing to watch the last episode, not just because the show was ending but because I had invested six years learning about these characters. As I viewed the finale, I felt their tears and joys and excitement as if I had spent time with “real” people. I fully understand that the characters are fictional, but numerous studies have measured people’s emotional attachment to television programming.

As emotionally wrenching as I personally found the finale to be, what made it even more challenging and thought-provoking was that these are very real things about which real people wonder.  What will heaven be like? How will I reconnect in heaven with those who have gone before me? What things have I done on earth that will matter for eternity?

I do not think the creators of “Lost” were suggesting that they had definitive answers to those questions.  Instead, they wanted us to think about how what we do and who we are today will affect our lives and others’ lives forever. One of the biggest complaints I have heard regarding the finale was that it did not answer all of the show’s mythological questions. To me, that is life. Life does not tie everything up in neat little packages. I think people want answers to many questions, but the reality is that we neither always know nor get the answers or resolution for which we hope.

Instead, we are forced to sometimes simply “let go,” to borrow two words that were repeated many times in the series finale. We need to let go of our worries, fears, bad choices we have made that cannot be reversed, regrets, bitterness, hurts, and so forth. Letting go allows us to be free, but there are some things that we should grasp and not let go (Philippians 3:12-14). Hold on to hope (Hebrews 6:18). Hold on to the relationships you have built in your life, because they matter; most importantly, hold on to Christ, for it is only through him that we have everything that really matters (Revelation 1:17-18).

Next week, I will conclude this series by examining some of the other major themes of “Lost.”

T. Scott Burgess is youth leader at Hope Christian Fellowship in Canastota.