Enjoying the Here and Now

Do you ever worry about your future? I mean do you find yourself daydreaming about what you will be doing in 25 years? Who you will be married to? Where you will be living? Wondering whether or not you will be able to retire at 50 or which would be a better place to own a second house, Jackson Hole or Destin? I know I do, but the problem is not that my heart desires these things, rather the problem is that I often find myself neglecting the here and now because I am trying to manipulate the present in order to maximize my happiness for the days to come.

More often than I care to admit, I find myself neglecting God’s gift that are in my life today. For example, I will see God’s provision for my life and think that it is nice, but wonder about what bigger and better gift might be over the next horizon. Or I will be so focused on where I am heading that I don’t stop to take in the sights and sounds of my current location. Basically, what these two examples tell me about myself is that I am ungrateful and dissatisfied with what God has given me.

Worrying is not something new to the human race, in fact it is such an issue that Jesus Christ addressed in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Matthew 5-7). He said, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on….Look at the birds of of air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” (Matt. 6:25-29).

The reason we are anxious about the future is that we don’t truly believe that God is sovereign, or in total absolute control. Or we don’t want Him to be in control for the reason that we think that we can do a better job ourselves. It is humbling to think that those things that God gives us on a daily basis is the best possible thing that we can have in our lives. But the Lord tells us that His provision for us exceeds that of birds and lilies and what was given to them was, well dazzling. So the next time you and I find ourselves daydreaming about the future remember that God is in control, that He is a heavenly Father who give good gifts to His children, and that He knows precisely what we need. And because of this our worrying is really and insult to Him. So stop and smell the roses that God has planted in your life and know that it is there for your enjoyment and relax. Who knows you might even like it.