For many reasons this is likely a book you never wanted to need to read. Like grabbing a book on stillbirth or dying well, these are only books we read when life forces us this direction. While we know “life won’t be perfect” we can’t anticipate exactly which kind of imperfect will arrive on our doorstep so we pass by those books on the shelf hoping a different, perhaps easier, “imperfect” will be our lot.

So often we want to go back. Before the accident, before the diagnosis, the body before the babies, the relationship before that fallout, before this president or that leader, before that poor financial decision, back to the good ol’ days. If only we could go back… things could be better.

This subtle, yet pervasive, theology of going back to Eden, to something better than now, permeates our churches and our spiritual formation. If we are not careful we forget God is making all things new, not taking us back to some idyllic perfection that theologians aren’t sure even ever existed.  This mindset is most often the first thing to hijack our re-imagined future the Holy Spirit is inviting us toward. This idea of going back before our spouse’s faith shifted stalls our creativity and leaves us ruminating on before they left faith, before they asked the difficult questions, before they betrayed us.

But throughout Scripture we are reminded that God isn’t the God of going back, but about redemption, renewal, re-imagining something we never had the imagination or even prayers big enough to consider in the first place. (Eph. 3:20)