I’m reminded of the boy in grammar school who was asked to name two days in the week that begin with the letter T. He replied, “today and tomorrow.”
I have been thinking lately about living today, not tomorrow or yesterday. It has occured to me that it is very easy to live with yesterday’s regrets or tomorrow’s fears which can rob me of the energy to live in the moment; live today.
I want to learn from the past, live in the moment and plan for the future. I want to live neither in the past nor in the future, but don’t want to ignore them.
The Past
There are so many things I can regret; wish I could relive, undue, change. It can easily eat my emotional lunch and rob me of what Jesus is doing right now. I can play the tape over and over again and dig myself an increasingly deeper emotional hole.
Someone put it well in saying, “Use the past as a guide post, not a hitching post;” A lot easier said than done.
The Future
Dreaming is good as it relates to the future, but day dreaming can be a giant waste of time and night-mare dreaming is even worse; allowing my mind to toy with worse-case scenarios. What if that happens, what if this happens? Years ago a couple share Psalm 112:7 in the Living Bible with Susan and me. “He does not fear bad news nor live in dread of what may happen. For he is settled in his mind that Jehovah will take care of him.” What perspective that verse has given us through they years.
Most Christians are familiar with Matthew 6:33 but haven’t given much thought to Matthew 6:34. In Eugene Peterson’s The Messsage, verse 34 reads “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”
I want to live right now and give all my energy to the moment, the people, the circumstances I am in, and not truncate what He is doing by investing energy in what I can’t undue from the past or predict for the future.
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