Bright Spot: Remember to celebrate your 'now' before worrying about future
My guess, call me crazy, is you will attend at least one graduate’s open house in the next few months.
Watch their eyes roll back in their heads when you ask − as about the 50th to do so − “Where you going to college/going to work/work this summer?”
Watch them snap out of their stupor − not hit their “this is a recording” button − when you ask instead, “What will you be doing tomorrow?”
The "now" is a place most of us need to spend more time. This is backed up in the Bible. The “day” is the unit of time used there far more than any other. I love to ask people why they think that is true.
Many times the Bible tells us just the next thing we need to take care of to be in the place we need to be. When most of the early church wanted to add all sorts of requirements onto the new folks who wanted to join the church, God clearly led the early church leaders to only lay a few requirements on them. This was the next big thing needed in their spiritual growth (Acts 15:19-20, 25-29).
Jesus repeatedly warns us not to worry about tomorrow. The one who “clothes the lilies of the fields and feeds the birds of the air” knows how to take care of your tomorrows. Focus on the day in front of you. Make it count. It will soon be passed. What are you doing to invest your time vs. just spending it? (Think video games and TV/social media/anything on a screen.)
Jesus told the rich young ruler that there was one thing he had to do next to experience real and eternal life. Thankfully, Jesus doesn’t require all of us to sell everything we have and give it to the poor (Mark 10:21).
Famed Russian writer of classics Leo Tolstoy loved to put moral lessons in his novels and short stories. In “Three Questions” he warned: “Remember there is only one time that is important − Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.”
Michael Jordan famously told how much of his success was attributed to the fact he devoted 1000% to the things he could control and 0% to the things he couldn’t. The present is the only place and time we have any control.
About the time the Titanic sunk, Dr. William Osler addressed the graduating class at Yale. His main point: ”What is your summer job?” (Just kidding!)
Instead of the usual platitudes and cliches about “reaching for the stars and you can do anything,” he simply challenged them: “Your main task in life is not to do what lies dimly in the distance, but what lies clearly at hand.” How much would heeding that blow away the fog that so often surrounds the whole question of “What is God’s will for my life?”
God’s Word is a “Lamp to our feet and a light to our path.” (Psalm 119:105) Ancient lamps only illuminated the next step. And I think you know what that is.
Rick Sams is pastor emeritus of Alliance Friends Church.
This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: Bright Spot: Remember to celebrate your 'now' before worrying about future
