Thought for Today
Psalm 95:7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice!
Ecclesiastes 3:1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
Matthew 6:27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? . . . 34 "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.
1 Corinthians 3:22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future-- all belong to you,
Greta beat me to today’s devotional in These Days. Those words today resonated in her soul, especially the final words, “Each day is a gift to be opened, a gift that evokes gratitude; let us make the most of it.” For her, that is a clarion call to live in the moment, to treasure and relish each and every moment of each and every day.
We are temporal creatures, integrally enmeshed in the constraints of time. Our lives are defined by clocks and calendars. We have schedules and appointments, all defined in part by appointed times.
It is easy to lose sight of the additional fact that our lives, our very thoughts and ideas are limited by our language. We do not think in abstract, wordless, pure intellect. We think in words and sentences. Our thoughts, our ideas, our inventions and discoveries are all word-dependent.
Western cultures view and understand time as a linear construct. All languages have some way of indicting time, usually through some verbal structure. My Essential English Grammar that I keep close by tells me of English, “Tense is the method of indicating time. There are six standard tenses: Present/Past/Future/Present Perfect/Past Perfect/Future Perfect.”
We can construct sentences in each of those tenses to describe events and issues from our past, from the present, or hoped for in the future. Each of those Biblical verses above contains a verb or verbs, some in one tense, some in other tenses. The basic idea of focusing our lives on living in the present is reflected in all of those verses. I have often found Matthew 6:34 helpful in keeping my own mind firmly focused on the present.
I certainly agree with the prayer offered in today’s devotional in These Days, “Help me pay attention to all that comes my way this day. Amen.” Being focused on each day as a precious gift from God is a good idea. Letting each day’s trouble be enough for that day prevents our being overwhelmed by life.
But, can anyone truly live ‘in the day?’ The internet tells me that there are languages without words for time. “According to some linguistic studies, the Hopi language does not have grammatical forms or expressions that directly refer to what we call ‘time,’ such as past, present, or future.” (en.wikipedia.org)
Do (did?) the Hopi people live only in the present? If so, how could they learn and apply the lessons of the past? Is it possible for us to live only in the present? Is that even a good idea? “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” (George Santayana)
Our ancestors-in-the-faith understood both the idea of living ‘in the moment,’ and the idea of treasuring the past for its lessons. By doing so we can look forward to the future with confident hope. Jesus made reference to the words of Moses, the Law. Jesus also taught his disciples to pray, “Luke 11:3 Give us each day our daily bread.” In the same prayer, Jesus looked toward the future, “Matthew 6:10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “5:15 Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil.” In the same letter, he had earlier written, “2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—”
Life is a gift from God. Our salvation is a gift from God. We are called to live faithfully in full knowledge of God’s gifts, wisely remembering our past, making the most of our opportunity in the present, and looking faithfully and hopefully toward Eternity with God in our future.
Stay safe, live wisely and faithfully, trust God,
Pastor Ray