Don’t’ “Fall Back”

Tomorrow, most of you in the U.S. will be turning your clocks back one hour: it is the end of Day Light Savings. (In March, we set our clocks ahead one hour.) Thus the expression, “Spring forward; Fall back.” This clever phrase brings to mind a practical spiritual principle: whenever we are in a season of hard growth (making progress) we will be tempted to turn back to something familiar (regress).

Upon ‘discovering’ this principle, Sigmund Freud ‘coined’ the term “regression” as the  psychological tendency to “revert to an earlier stage of development rather than handling unacceptable impulses in a more adult manner.”

Centuries before Freud, Paul spoke of regression. He called it "turning" or "shrinking back."  Its opposite is “endurance.” In other words, at any given time, we are either enduring (which results in progress) or regressing. Then Paul declares: “But we are not of those who shrink back… but we are those who … endure” (Hebrews 10:39, 36). In other words, by God's grace, we won’t “fall back.”