Faith Works 1-11-20

Faith Works 1-11-20

Jeff Gill

 

Another step into tomorrow

___

 

My faith in the future is strong, but my hopes for the near term are, well, limited.

 

God has sent a strong witness into the world for us, a sign of life beyond life that points toward a promise that is offered to us all. And if you read your Bible with heart and attention and care, you'll see clearly how that future prospect is intended to strengthen us for the now.

 

And now is where we live, where we make decisions and take action. Now is important.

 

Then, on the other hand, the moment now past, is not when we choose or do. We've chosen, we've done, and it's memory where we reflect perhaps on what we should have done, might have decided to do, but can't change. That's what then, or once upon a time, is for us in the now. It's a huge part of us, maybe the biggest part in many ways, but it is relatively fixed.

 

Now, on the other hand, is filled with expectation and anticipation and opportunity. Now is when we grasp the nettle or take the helm and set our course, one direction or another. Now is the moment in which we shift into drive or back into reverse, and either way step on the gas pedal.

 

If the road ahead seems clear, we can accelerate accordingly. If there's a path forward, we step out and start with that proverbial single step onto a greater journey.

 

Where we get gummed up is with soon, or next, or even just tomorrow, let alone next week. It is amazing, really, to see how much possibility can be taken up just in consideration of tomorrow. Today we are where we are, we go as far as we can see, and we've got what's at hand. Our now is a developing, evolving, possibility consuming reality, but tomorrow is filled with everything from uncompleted tasks to long deferred potential and much put off possibilities. Tomorrow you could step on a plane to Orlando; that can't happen at 2 pm today (getting tickets, passing through security, travel time), but tomorrow? It might be far down the list, but it's not off of it.

 

So we've got our past to hand over into forgiveness, and the farther future into the care of an eternal hope, both of which are intended to allow us to make the most of our now – this is a largely Christian formulation, but its also a common understanding in our culture in general.

 

The flaw in all of this for most people, myself included, is tomorrow. Not the deeper, more distant future, but getting our plans and motivations worked out from just past now to "next." And my pastoral sense is that the dilemma is that we're just too used to ratcheting up our expectations too quickly up out of now into what's possible next, what's necessary soon, what's right for us later, from the limitations of the moment which we might well accept, to a series of steps into possibilities that should be close at hand, but keep receding into a fog of more of the same.

 

In practical terms, it's called procrastination. Putting off. It's all around us in various forms. Every burden we carry unnecessarily, every pile of stuff we can't figure out what to do with, every obvious option we delay in starting until it's too late: procrastination. It can be delaying the start of a task we don't want to do, but it can also be our hesitation to do things that are not only good for us, but that we want to do, but don't . . . because to do so would be to deny some even greater, if unlikely option.

 

Paul says in Romans, chapter 7, verse 15: "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." Given that he wrote this nearly 2,000 years ago, this problem is clearly not unique to our age. The tendency to ratchet up our own sense of possibility from the now into our then, our next maybe, our could be soon, opens up so much potential for our imagination that we can't even be practical about what our simple steps forward beyond now should be.

 

So I am trying in 2020 to abandon my hopes for tomorrow, to look at my now a little more realistically, and let the light of my lamp show me one step forward at a time, and let that be . . . enough.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him how you're thinking about tomorrow at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.