by Jerry Senn
The US Dept of Agriculture says that each year the average American will eat 1,996 pounds of food—about a ton. Now multiply that by the average American’s lifespan.
Think about the reality of going into a room that had all the food you were to eat in a lifetime: 46,000 pounds of beef and poultry; 7,000 pounds of butter and fat. If somebody sat us down in a warehouse and said we had to eat that much food, we’d be overwhelmed.
And yet we’ll all do just that. What’s our secret to putting away 75 or so tons of food? We do it one day (& one bite) at a time!!!
When we look too far into the future, we get easily overwhelmed. When we try to anticipate every problem and answer every question that concerns us, we get paralyzed. That’s because we are not intended to live preoccupied by either the future or the past.
Jesus said, “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear … Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? … Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:25-33).
We live at the intersection of the past and the future. We remember what’s behind us. We remember it primarily with either gratitude or with regret. We anticipate what’s ahead of us. We anticipate it primarily with either hope or fear.
But the only place to find God is at this moment, this day. Regret will try to make us live in the past; anxiety will try to make us live in the future. We release both our past mistakes and future fears into God’s care so that we can ‘walk in the Spirit’ in the moment. It becomes his gift to us.
Now is a part of eternity. With God, it’s always now. And another now. And we take each now for granted, but we can’t manufacture them. Maybe nowhere is our powerlessness more apparent than when it comes to time. I can’t. He can. I think I’ll let him. Every now is a miracle and a gift.
(Excerpts from John Ortberg, “Steps.”)
“As long as it is called today…
If you hear his voice
Do not harden your hearts”
(Hebrews 3:13-15)