For many years, I was a “should’ve” guy. Basically, in a strange twist of illogical thinking, I would spend waste time obsessing about things past that I had no control over. In many ways, I am still that guy. Not sure how my various personality profiles line up with that kind of thinking. But, I did do spend time thinking about such things. I walk around my house. I walk around the church. I look at my email. I think. And all I see are things I have failed to do or things that just need done. It has placed me square in the middle of being, as my friend Neil says, “petrified”. Not in the scared sense. But in the “frozen/not able to move froward” sense. Not a fun place to be.
Recently, in the past year or so, I have gone a little the other way. Worrying and strategizing about the future. The “what if” scenarios as headed towards tomorrow and beyond. I’ve looked for the path towards a certain outcome, even if that outcome was/is not necessarily healthy.
Then, a couple of days ago, I heard the still small voice of God talking to me. “Yes… speak Lord, for your servant is listening” (If only that were the case all the time! Both the Him speaking and (more like) the me listening!):
“Live in the present. All I have for you, the best I have for you is to be lived out TODAY. Not the ills of yesterday. Not the potential paths of tomorrow. ALL I have for you is today. Live in the present.”
Wow.
An obvious passage relates to this:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life[b]?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
You would think that with a “charge” like this that I would wake up and be ready for the day without thinking about the past or the future. I would say that I have looked past a few things and have been focused (more) on the task at hand. So, that’s a good thing! Maybe, that’s a God thing!
So, I move forward, trying to live for God in the present.
