Exasperating Uncertainty
So Jesus, About Tomorrow……
Lately there hasn’t been a day when tomorrow hasn’t weighed on my mind. It's the uncertainty, that dizzying desire to control that paralyzes today and poisons tomorrow. The concerns of the future send me anxiously shoveling to shore up tomorrow while ignoring the hole I’m standing in today. We’ve all had days, weeks, or even decades of this obsession with the future……even though God repeatedly warns us of the dangers. And Jesus is right, tomorrow most definitely will have enough worry of its own…..but it's hard, right? Uncertainty just sucks! Live-in-the-moment is a wonderful sound bite but making it a reality is sometimes a bit of a challenge.
They say it robs you of your peace and I believe it!
It’s funny, I thought prison taught me better!
I left prison with a down-right earnest belief that I would never take another moment for granted. After living years in an environment where independence is stripped away and replaced with repetition and rules. Where every day old rules could be replaced with new ones and the sheer separateness creates a bubble-like existence that alienates you from the outside. Having learned firsthand that the unthinkable can happen in this life and it can separate you from your family in a heartbeat……I thought living in the moment was my new attribute to keep.
Then I find out it isn’t an attribute at all.
It starts in prison where you're conditioned to be adaptable because anything can happen tomorrow. You can plan all you want but you are quickly taught that most things are simply out of your control. Over time you gradually learn there are a few very small things you can control. It’s a subtle process that causes you to concern yourself only with the things you can influence and not get worked up about the ones that you can’t. There’s only one tomorrow in prison and it can become an obsession, that’s your release date. Some adapt better than others and honestly, it took me awhile. Then somewhere in the process, God magically taught me to concentrate on today and let Him handle tomorrow.
Fast forward to the present where the world's conditioning has been at work on me for awhile, and suddenly I’m troubling over the future like I haven’t already been taught this lesson. Isn’t that classic devil though? Subtly whispering in our ear until we forget what God’s done for us in the past. Like the frog who jumps out of the boiling water but if you put him in the water and gradually turn the heat up, he’ll stay in and boil to death. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly and quietly it happens. Satan is just sneaky!
And it’s the easiest thing in the world with me…all I have to do is allow my focus to falter. A great example in my life is my morning time with God. I’ll get busy or running behind, so I’ll skip a morning, which leads to missing more mornings, and pretty soon I’m not even setting my alarm any more. And suddenly, that peaceful assurance I’m accustomed to…….disappears.
Thankfully my Father is ridiculously patient with me and isn’t going to let me wander off too far. Recently I was drawn to a scripture:
Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.
Proverbs 4:23
The Hebrew word for heart is leb and Strong’s concordance defines it as your will and intellect and the center of everything that is you.
What a big statement………..essentially what you allow into your mind via your habits will determine the course of your life!
Yet it's amazingly hard to stay focused and persevere; to pursue God with all your heart and mind, year after year. If that doesn’t make you believe we have a real life adversary who wants you to fail, I don’t know what will.
I’m not sure why God chose this topic because I don’t have a permanent solution to obsessing over the future and how to replace uncertainty with assurance. It comes and goes with me, and while I occasionally relapse, God has taught me where to go when my focus blurs. It’s simply really, my focus blurs when I don’t devote time and effort to my love relationship with God.
You see, the ability to live in the moment isn’t an attribute, it’s an effect. It’s simply a by-product of living close to the one who holds today and tomorrow in His hands.
In the end it comes down to self preservation, in this crazy world I can’t afford to not start my day off with prayer. Can you?
Keep following!
