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Today is the Future



“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.” ~Abraham Lincoln

"Wax on, wax off" ~Mr. Miyagi

God forbid we make a mistake! In the information age, it seems all the more compelling that we should never come into error. We have all of history as a basis for our decisions, how could it be that we repeat a mistake of a time past, one documented in bits accessible within milliseconds by Google search? There is a logic to that, but most would agree that, for humans, the appropriate orientation is to err. 

I begin here, in error, because it is perhaps the place that I get tripped up so often. My wife has called me an "end game" thinker. My head is in the future. And I have made plans and interiorly navigated a path (only known to me) to that end, despite who might be the people that need to bring us to the end, or any of the contingencies that will be encountered to shape the actual "road to the end". 

I hate the idea of a waste of time. But I end up wasting so much time by taking dead end paths. I think I know the answer, and then set out on course, and try, best I can, to stay faithful to that course. The trouble is, I get stuck on that path. In very rare instances will the course set out on be the exact one that needs to be followed on to the end (the wide open path of Jesus excepted, but that main thoroughfare is so wide it has room for all of the other subsidiary paths to meander to the One they were intended to find). Adjustments need to be constantly made, corrections. 

The adjustment that I believe God is leading me to now is to be here now. I have an affinity and orientation in the future. I have said to Jess before, "to me, once I think of it, and the end game, it's already done... all that's left is to walk the path." She says, "yeah, I know you think of it like that, but there are a whole lot of details that you often don't think of when thinking that way." Those details are found by living today! 

Today is a place of small baby steps. It is not the place of grand finishes, gigantic flourish, or ultimate arrival. It is the place for the next step. It is error to think that I am the incredible Hulk and that I can bound to the end with one leap. I am a man, and must put one foot in front of the other constantly assessing where I am going. Of course, in such a situation, it helps to have a path. 

Heavenly Father, help me to be on the path of today. Not the one where I am triumphant in the future, or the one where I am emerged from the past. Help me to be on the path You've chosen for me, not the one I lay out for myself. And I have a tendency to conform all effort, to the extent that I can, to my self-appointed path of the most good. But, are You calling me to be flexible? To relinquish my way and to see where You may be leading? 

In Jesus Name,

Amen

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