"Why do you like history?" someone once asked, "It’s so dull; dates and places and names I can’t remember."
Somewhere along the line in this person’s life he was given the wrong sample of the subject of history. This led to a grave misunderstanding. It would be like giving you an icecream sandwich that you spit out because you don’t like the taste of the paper. If no one ever unwrapped it properly for you, or taught you to do it for yourself, you might be stuck your whole life thinking icecream sandwiches taste like paper.
Amatuer teachers and poor writing have contributed to this effect as regards history and its interest. There are few things quite as interesting, or "tasty" as history clearly presented. History is not names and places and dates, although those features are present. History is also not about politics and war and government, although these aspects seem to get a large share of the focus. Rather, history is the consideration of life lived by others, in previous times, in differing circumstances than ourselves, but from the same human perspective. History is the mystery of time, the wonder of others, and the finality and authority of God’s laws all mixed together. History is pain and suffering, joy and celebration, and relationships good and bad. History is memory and tradition and lightness and darkness. History is human nature and nature in juxtaposition. History is a story told in old photographs, a myth told around campfires, the meaning in old-fashioned words. History is real. It happened. And what makes it most interesting; it happened to them.
They will always be the most interesting part of it all; the ones before us. They were the ones who lived it first hand. Our ancient is their modern, our old was their new. Our mystery of history was their reality. Our fictions their truths. I see them in yellowed photographs, staring blankly while holding still for a process that took minutes to our milliseconds. I see them in their writings and their architecture and their art. I see them in their descendents and their creations, and I see them in myself. Each tragedy, each triumph, each dramatic scene, however painted by the sketchiness of the facts that remain to us, each of these were real and vivid to them. They were not better than us, and they were not worse. They were not backwards, and they were not always right. But they do have one thing over us, an advantage we cannot claim until the wheel moves further round its axis, and that is the plain, solid fact that they were there.
This is where history comes alive for me. I feel what it might have been like to have been amongst them. I sense their fears and aspirations as they faced events blindly that we see through the adventageous lense of the passing of time. I wonder at their decisions and choices, and yearn to learn from both their failures and weaknesses. I stand in awe that God arranged to put them here before me, and wonder why it is so. I think about why we are placed where we are, and when we are. And I remember that many of them, an extreme many of them, if I understand the mathematics of the generations properly, were my ancestors. Their blood is pumping through my vines. We have inherited not only the very dirt upon which they have trod, but the very tour of duty they have already completed. They have had their turn, and now we have ours. As George Washington said to John Adams at Adams’ inauguration, "Now I am fairly out and you are fairly in." It is our turn, now. Let’s see if we can do any better at it than they did. We do have an advantage, after all. We can learn from them. As long as we first take off the wrapper.
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