How shall we move into the future? We all know that the future won’t be handed to
us on a silver platter. If we are
blessed to have a future it will be lived into, not simply given. The days may be given but what we do with
them will be lived into. We need skills
and talents and resources, no doubt about it.
But we need something more. We
need grace, God’s grace, a grace that comes to us in a myriad of ways: love, mercy, compassion, justice, power,
vision, hope, guidance, patience, tenacity, favor, joy, peace, promise.
Not that far out it front of us lies the future. It is
barreling down at us with the speed of light and before we can catch our
breath, tomorrow will be yesterday and we will find ourselves saying, “My
goodness, how time flies.”
Isn’t tomorrow, in many ways, the fruit of seeds planted
today? If this is true we ought to be
very careful as to what we plant. And,
for those of us who dare claim faith in God through Jesus Christ, ought not
planted seeds come from our worship of God?
We don’t simply plant. We plant
seeds that come from the realized grace that covers our lives by God, and then
energizes every fiber of what it means to be who we are, with a life on which
the fingerprints of God are everywhere.
C. S. Lewis said somewhere,
“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an
hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” This
makes the think of the prayer of Moses where the request is made, “So teach us
to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12
NASB). James gives us the somber thought, “You do not know what your life will
be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor
that appears for a little while and then vanishes away” (James 4:14, NASB). Then
James gives us the wisest counsel we could ever receive, “You ought to say, ‘If
the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that” (James 4:15, NASB).
Ultimately we do not own our
days. We are stewards of them but we
don’t own them. They are given to
us. We are the recipients of a great grace
we haven’t earned and don’t deserve.
What shall we do with these
gifts we call “days?” Live them! Isn’t that the best response? Take each moment and minute and hour and day
and LIVE them. Live them fully alive. Live them aware of the fact that “every good
thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father
of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (James 1:17,
NASB).
Live them, and in the living hear
this great counsel from the Good Book,
Don’t be misled: No one makes a
fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants
selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of
weeds. All he’ll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in
response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a
crop of real life, eternal life. (Galatian 6:7-8, MSG).
“But at my back I
always hear
time’s winged chariot
hurrying near.”
What seeds shall we plant today?
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