Time sneaks around like Flash the superhero. Sometimes you don’t even realize it’s moving and zoom — weeks, months, years have passed. Then there is that moment of lucidity where you feel the faint afterbreeze of that passing whirlwind and you marvel at how you ended up here. Extra points if you got the comic pun…
But seriously, today was one of those moments. For the first time in months, I felt the breeze and realized the bandit had struck again. Once again I had allowed the seemingly urgent to distract me from the things most important. It is so very easy to become hypnotized by the stress and busyness of modern life that you end up hardly living at all. Honestly, I have always considered my ability to live in the present a strength. But today, I noticed something was missing.
Jesus did say, don’t worry about tomorrow. Years ago I made a conscious effort to practice that. But the thing with conscious effort is, sometimes you miss the point. I’ve never been one to dwell much on the past. Sure, there are moments, but regret is something that has never been an obstacle. Regret cheapens grace. So because the past was irrelevent I somehow equated that Jesus was saying the future was irrelevant as well. Living in the moment must be the key. I’d heard that from other sources too.
But there’s a problem with that. Jesus never said don’t think about tomorrow, he said don’t worry about it. It was about an emotional response, not a logistics one. He also talked about enduring to the end, counting the cost. Paul talked about forgetting what’s behind and pressing forward. Solomon gave that amazing “consider the ant” analogy. Ants go about their merry way in the moment, but they are scurrying for a tomorrow purpose. Scurrying for today gets you nowhere.
There has to be a balance and I had lost it. James talks about life being a vapor and we don’t know tomorrow’s fate, but yet we should be living every day to make tomorrow better. That tomorrow is not just a physical one, but the tomorrow of the age to come. Today mindedness can make us lose sight of what’s really important. Storing up eternal treasure can be as simple as making sure that what you are doing today is making tomorrow better.
It’s being faithful in the small things that keeps your eyes open to the big picture. (Luke 19:17)