It’s been a year since I started my last semester of seminary. A spring and summer semester have now passed, blissfully absent of classes and homework. But even without class registration, tuition payments, and textbooks arriving on my doorstep, there’s one familiar feature of school life that’s followed me into the fall: syllabus shock.
It’s the shock to the system that you feel when you see a semester’s worth of work on a couple of pages. Every chapter, every quiz, every paper, every exam — hours, days, weeks, and months of work compressed into one tidy PDF.
Virtually every semester, these documents reduced me to tears. They left me wailing…HOW???
How will I make it through this semester?
How will I finish this mountain of books?
How will I study for that exam the same week I’ve committed to teach a Bible study?
How will I ever write that paper when I’m mentally pulled in a dozen different directions?
I thought the overwhelming weight at the start of a new semester was unique to student life, but I’m finding that it’s more universal. (If anything, I find myself nostalgic for the days when my responsibilities were neatly contained in a single document.)
Maybe you’re feeling that same weight today, as you transfer appointments and tasks into your planner or calendar.
Maybe it’s not your syllabus creating the shock, but the countless school emails about your child’s assignments and schedule.
Maybe it’s all the yeses you’ve said — all those good things that you now see overlapping on the calendar.
Maybe it’s unexpected complexity to what you thought would be an ordinary fall — a medical diagnosis, tight finances, or a loss that’s left you reeling.
Maybe it’s the new and unfamiliar — a new home, a new season, and new rhythms.
Or maybe it’s the all-too-familiar — a new season, the same suffering, with no end in sight.
Author Christine Hoover describes the anxiety that can overtake us in these moments of overwhelm:
“Anxiety draws us out of our body and out of today — the day we can see and touch and experience — and sets our mind on a future we can’t see or touch or know.”1
The syllabus, planner, calendar, and task list all give us a glimpse of the future. They show us all that will be required of us and all that to which we’ve committed. They reveal moments in which we’ll need more than we have right now: more time, more money, more focus, more understanding, more help from others.
But the glimpse they offer is limited, because they can never show us the provision. And that limited perspective — the future without the provision — leaves us anxious.
In those anxious moments, I’ve often experienced the first measure of provision by shifting my perspective. When the season ahead is daunting, look to seasons past.
This change in perspective is woven into the story of Scripture. Again and again, God calls His people to look back and remember. His provision in the present begins with reminders of His provision in the past.
Perhaps the clearest example of this is the book of Deuteronomy. In the narrative leading up to this book, the Lord led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and made a covenant with them: “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” He led them across a desert land, providing for every need as His presence went with them and before them.
In the book of Numbers, this same generation of Israelites — those who had experienced the Exodus, the parting of the Red Sea, the earth-shaking presence of the Lord at Mount Sinai, and the provision of manna in the wilderness — came to the banks of the Jordan River, and they refused to go across.
Their perspective was limited.
All they could see was the task ahead — taking the land the Lord promised to give them — without seeing the provision. Because of their disobedience, that generation forfeited their inheritance in the land; their children’s generation would enter the Promised Land in their place.
This brings us back to Deuteronomy. At the end of one season and the start of another, a new generation stands where their parents stood forty years earlier, and Moses broadens their perspective. Yes, they still look forward, across the Jordan to the work that lies before them. But before they look ahead, they look back.
The entire book of Deuteronomy might be summed up in one call: “Don’t forget to remember.”
Remember the covenant: “I will be your God, and you will be my people.”
Remember the promise the Lord made: to give you this land.
Remember your failures, the Lord’s discipline, and His mercy.
Remember that your clothes and your sandals have not worn out these forty years.
Remember the manna you’ve eaten in barren places.
Remember the victory the Lord has given you over your enemies.
Remember the Sabbath and the rest He has provided.
Remember His commands, His good and perfect rule.
In short, remember the Lord your God.
Remembering the Lord’s presence and provision in the past gives us certainty for the future. The psalmists model this for us as they declare, “His steadfast love endures forever!” They look back to the evidence of the Lord’s steadfast love in the past, and they anticipate it in the future. Why? Because He is steadfast, unchanging, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
If past experience isn’t sufficient to remind us of God’s faithfulness, we find it in the patterns of creation itself. The beloved hymn, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” points to the evidence of his faithfulness:
Summer and winter and springtime and harvest
Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love
Summer heat slowly (very slowly) gives way to fall breezes; icy winter thaws and brings the spring rains. Every day testifies to the Creator’s faithfulness, as the sun rises and sets unfailingly. Season by season and day by day, the Lord of heaven and earth is unchanging and true, steadfast and faithful.
This same God — the Lord who declared, “I will be your God, and you will be my people” — has provided in Jesus Christ all things that pertain to life and godliness. He has richly provided for His people’s greatest need, and He has given us His very presence by His Spirit. Not one word of all His good promises has failed. With such a track record, how could we doubt His future faithfulness?
As Christine Hoover wrote, our anxiety will always cause us to look forward. It causes us to forget our faithful God. But if we stop first to look back, our entire perspective shifts. When we remember “all I have needed thy hand hath provided,” the needs that seemed overwhelming are reduced to their rightful size.
The future still holds the same responsibilities, commitments, appointments, and tasks, but we remember what we cannot yet see: the unceasing, steadfast love of the Lord. We remember that His mercies, new every morning, will meet us there. This we call to mind, and therefore we have hope.
A Quiet Moment: Space to Reflect
Before looking any further into the future, take five minutes to flip or scroll back through your planner, calendar, to-do list, or budget — whatever is overwhelming you in the moment. Where do you see evidence of God’s faithfulness, presence, and provision in the past?
What do you need today? Have you encountered this need before? If so, how did you experience the Lord’s provision? Ask Him to show you His new mercies this morning.
Read Psalm 136 aloud and “give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.”
A playlist to help you remember the Lord’s steadfast love and faithfulness.
Christine Hoover. With All Your Heart: Living Joyfully Through Allegiance to King Jesus. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2020), 77.