God doesn’t change—yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the same God. But we? We change constantly. We reinvent ourselves, our bodies, our minds, and our spiritual practices again and again. Isn’t it natural, then, that our faith would shift and reshape along the way?
This is the human story—a messy, multi-layered, wonderfully unpredictable path through life. Every fragment of your spiritual journey, every stumble and triumph, is useful and redeemable. Own it. Don’t get stuck in spiritual regret, and don’t settle for spiritual stagnation. Keep growing. Keep exploring. And most of all, be proud of the crazy mosaic of your faith that you walk upon.
In Joni Mitchell’s iconic song “Big Yellow Taxi", she laments, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” capturing the careless destruction of nature in favour of ugly urban development. We often bury our personal histories—ashamed of the mess and mistakes. They are covered over with layers of shame and regret? I look back at my childhood innocence as unimportant, sweet perhaps, and my young adult fervour as slightly cringeworthy, but all parts of the walk make up the spiritual man. We have little locked safes that house the various iterations of our faith journey. We don't often open them up and gaze upon the footsteps.
From a spiritual perspective, embracing and learning from the past can reshape our journey into a kind of “paved paradise". Each brick, each stone, becomes part of our inner growth.
In recent decades, a spiritual deconstruction “industry” has emerged—one that markets the ugliness of our past like a bonfire of self-consciousness. Too often, the ashes are then used to stoke revenge and remorse rather than healing.
We just dress ourselves in the faith of the now. People lack curiosity and desire to explore beyond their past. Or, just as often, we discard faith altogether and spend our lives complaining about its failures and disappointments – never truly owning our part in the dismantling.
Then there are the blinkered ones. When we stand at the hotel window, refusing to look down – never noticing the parking-lot rubble and the human mess all around. Their eyes are dutifully bolted heavenward, entranced by the noble sway of palm trees. This was me for a good few years.
Scripture consistently encourages believers to reflect on their actions and grow from them. Repentance, derived from the Greek word "metanoia", signifies a transformative change of heart and mind. This transformation isn’t about erasing the past but redeeming it. Repentance, actually by its very nature, ensures that we look backwards.
Apostle Paul could have been embarrassed about his LinkedIn profile; instead, he doesn’t shy away from recalling his past. He uses it to demonstrate the boundless grace of God: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect."
Instead of tossing our mistakes in the bin, what if we saw them as paving stones on the spiritual road? Every twist, every wrong turn, every misstep—it all gets built into a faith that can actually hold up when the storms roll in. Recycling those faith experiences turns our path into something walkable and interesting for others too, not just another pile of ashes.