Many years ago, my wife and I were at a point where we agreed that we were dissatisfied with our lives. We both worked way too much. We had few friends. We had little in our lives outside of our careers.

Eventually, we came up with a set of goals that we wrote down and posted in our kitchen. We wanted to have more fun. We wanted to have more friends. We wanted to be involved in our community. We even spent time praying that God would help us to experience these things.

A few years later, we looked back on our goal sheet and realized that, much to our amazement, we had experienced much of what we hoped for. Instead of following the path of least resistance and letting our jobs and careers determine our priorities, we somehow found a way to maintain our vocational lives and have much richer social and spiritual lives. That look backwards gave us tremendous confidence in God, who we felt had led us to a more rewarding place.

Today's readings ask us to take a similar look back at God's faithfulness throughout history. In the first reading, we are reminded that God began with just one person, Abraham, and told him, "Look up at the stars, if you can. Just so shall your descendents be." God, of course, kept this promise to Abraham.

In today's Gospel reading, Jesus leads his disciples to a mountain, where he is visited by Moses and Elijah. We're told, "They appeared in glory and spoke of his passage which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem." Moses and Elijah are powerful reminders of the faithfulness of God to Israel, and their appearance with Jesus serves as a kind of endorsement of Jesus' ministry as a continuation of that faithfulness.

We all need to look backward now and then to be reminded of God's faithfulness in our lives and our communities. It is usually not easy to detect the presence of God in the midst of difficult times. We often feel abandoned or ignored. But when we look back, we can often see how God has taken care of us, even when we may have felt neglected. Today's readings remind us that God keeps his promises.

We need this reassurance when we look to the future. For just as a look back might allow us to see the faithfulness of God in our lives, we still usually only see uncertainty when we look to the future. How will we care for ourselves, our families, our communities in the troubled times in which we live? Moving into the future requires faith --- faith that God is real, faith that God cares, faith that God will keep his word.

Lent is a time when we are asked to recommit ourselves to a life of faith --- trusting in the word of God more than we trust in forces of this world to take care of us. To live a life of faith, we must believe that a lifestyle of compassion, generosity and obedience is far more rewarding than a lifestyle of self-centered consumption and self-protective greed. It is not always easy to believe this looking forward, but a look back every now and then can help.

Bill Peatman writes from Napa.