Recently read a book about the power of the present moment. The author had some very good points about how we are constantly distracting ourselves with the future or the past.
Sometimes we miss out on what is right in front of us because we are reminiscing about the past. The past is important: if we do not have a strong connection with our past we will not learn from our mistakes. In Ecclesiastes 7:10 it says “Say not ‘why were the former days better than these?’ for it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”
Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man’s life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.
– Marcus Aurelius
Likewise, we often do not take full advantage of the opportunities God gives us because we are too preoccupied with the future. We can waste so much time either fearing what might happen, or waiting to be happy until some future event takes place. I spent much of my life looking forward to the future: first to graduating high school, then college, a certain job opportunity, or moving to Nicaragua. There will always be some future event that you convince yourself will be the start of your life. But what attitude does God want from us?
You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.
-John Green, Looking for Alaska
In Matthew 6 Jesus says:
That is why I say to you, don’t worry about living—wondering what you are going to eat or drink, or what you are going to wear. Surely life is more important than food, and the body more important than the clothes you wear. Look at the birds in the sky. They never sow nor reap nor store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you much more valuable to him than they are? Can any of you, however much he worries, make himself an inch taller? And why do you worry about clothes? Consider how the wild flowers grow. They neither work nor weave, but I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was never arrayed like one of these! Now if God so clothes the flowers of the field, which are alive today and burnt in the stove tomorrow, is he not much more likely to clothe you, you ‘little-faiths’ (Phillips)
There is a keen difference between planning for the future and being consumed by it. In this passage, birds spend their time building nests and flowers are constantly processing light and soil and water. But they are not psychologically preoccupied with future or past events. They do not waste emotional energy on things they cannot change. Instead they are forced to trust completely in God.
Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man’s life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.
-Marcus Aurelius
Embracing each moment that God gives us can be an act of worship. Planning is still important, but we are not to rob the present moment of its power by spending all of our thoughts and emotions on the future. If we focus on the sights and smells and wonder of the present moment, our hearts will quickly turn to praise.
Smell the roses. Drink your coffee slowly. Take time to watch the sunrise.
And if as you read this a little voice inside your brain says ‘well that’s all good and fine for you because your life is not busy like mine. I just don’t have the time to do those things’ then you are missing the point. You can live a full life without being busy or hectic. Most people find themselves double booked, scattered and fritzed when instead of engaging fully in what is right in front of them, they are worried sick about accomplishing everything on their daily agenda.
“I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Jesus commanded ‘Don’t worry at all then about tomorrow. Tomorrow can take care of itself! One day’s trouble is enough for one day.” He understood the human tendency to be distracted from the glory of the present by the faint outline of the future. It’s the greener grass on the other side that keeps us discontent and looking for more But the word says “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
If you were to sit down and write out your thoughts for the entire day, what takes up the majority of your mental rambling? What is your mind’s voice saying? Maybe you are like me and you just think in simple, neanderthalic actions like ‘make sandwich’ or ‘run from bees’
Or maybe you are completely distracted from your friends and family and the many gifts God has given you because you are fixated on the past or the future. The present is the only thing you can actually change. You can correct past mistakes and avoid future ones but only in the present.
Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It’s been that way all this year. It’s been that way so many times.
-Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
There is a poem by Wendell Berry that I love very much that says:
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Andrew Peterson has a song that talks about the golden hour. Maybe put it on your Ipod and climb up to the highest place you can watch the sunset from and rest in the present moment.
