The past doesn't define us — but God's track record of keeping his word is the only solid ground from which to run toward his future.
Central Image
The Wright Brothers' aviator goggles — men raised by a conservative circuit preacher who never worked a Sunday, who invented the airplane anyway: the deepest grounding in faith turned out to be what launched human flight.
The Turn
Looking backward is not the opposite of looking forward. It's the foundation of it. You don't trust the future on nothing — you trust it because of what you've already seen him do.
Outline
The Wright Brothers and the New Year
Toby comes in at New Year's with Orville and Wilbur as his image for going forward — what it took for anyone to imagine powered flight and then actually build it. The real question underneath the text: how do you get launched into something new?
Luke 2:22-40 — The Temple
Mary and Joseph come in for a standard ritual obligation — the purification, the presentation — and get ambushed by two strangers who turn out to be anything but incidental. Luke is doing something deliberate: the most ordinary act of a new mother becomes the moment when ancient promises start closing. The parents bring the one who is going to be everyone's purification.
Simeon and the Open Accounts
Simeon's name goes back to the beginning: God heard. He's been carrying the promise that he wouldn't die before he saw the Lord's Christ — not a rumor, the Holy Spirit prophesied it to him. Toby's read: every promise God makes creates a debt to himself, and here in the temple he's paying off accounts that go back to Eden. Simeon's first word in Greek is "now" — which is really "finally." He gets his honorable discharge. What the Messiah brings isn't just a new thing; it's the completion of everything unfinished.
Anna and the Faithful Remnant
Anna's lineage matters. The tribe of Asher is one of the few northern tribes that came down to Hezekiah's Passover before the Assyrian dispersal — people who turned toward God when it was hard, stayed, and weren't lost. She stands for the post-exilic faithful: the ones who came back to a land that wasn't the same, who fasted and prayed for 84 years as a widow, who never left the temple. Toby frames her appearance like Judith showing up out of the story books — a folk hero stepping into the room — and says that's the hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck feeling Luke is going for.
Milton Wright and the Lie
The story that Bishop Milton Wright preached against heavier-than-air flight is a myth, manufactured during the evolution debates to paint orthodox Christianity as the enemy of progress. The actual household: two libraries, intense debate encouraged, every kind of inquiry welcomed — and no work on Sundays, ever. Orville said he couldn't imagine children being better prepared for what they did. The men who invented the future were built by the most rigorous, grounded, doctrinally conservative Christian household you could describe.
How God Works in History
Judges: a generation that didn't know what God had done or who he was. Toby's frame: the past is not what defines us — we're not prisoners of it. But God's past faithfulness is what validates the promise-maker, and that's what gives you the nerve to trust his future. He said it, it happened. He said it again, it happened again. Now he's saying something about where we're going — and that history is the reason to believe it.
The Landing
Put the goggles on. The airplane is nothing compared to what God has for those who love him in Christ — but you don't run forward on nothing. You run on every time he said he would and then did. Look back enough to trust. Then go.
Questions to Think About
- Toby started with the Wright Brothers as his New Year's image — men who looked forward more than almost anyone. Who or what comes to your mind when you think about looking forward? What makes some people better at it than others?
- Simeon has been waiting his whole life for this moment, and when it comes, his first word is essentially "finally." What do you think kept him going — what does the text actually say about how he stayed oriented toward something he hadn't seen yet?
- Toby said every promise God makes puts him in a kind of debt to himself — an open account that has to be closed. What does it mean that when Mary and Joseph walk into that temple, God is settling accounts that go all the way back to the garden?
- Toby called the verse in Judges about the generation that didn't know what God had done one of the saddest in the Bible. Where in your own life are you at risk of not really knowing — not just knowing about, but actually knowing — what God has done?
- Toby drew a line: the past isn't what defines you, but it's what tells you whether the one making promises about the future is worth listening to. When you look back honestly at your own history with God, what's the evidence — and do you treat it like evidence?
- Simeon tells Mary a sword will pierce her own soul — not because of the crucifixion, Toby said, but because even mothers aren't automatically "for" their child becoming their Lord. Where are you quietly rooting for Jesus to be your champion rather than actually submitting to him as Lord?
- The Wright Brothers' most rigorous Christian convictions turned out to be the foundation that launched human flight, not the obstacle to it. What would it mean for this church if we really treated our faith that way — as runway, not anchor — in whatever we're trying to build this year?
- Toby said looking back at God's faithfulness is what tells you what's worth your time today. Pick one specific decision you're facing this week — something you'd spend time on or not spend time on — and run it through that filter. What does it tell you?