A couple of weeks ago, a well-dressed man stopped by the church office. He had in his hands a stack of calendars from one of the local funeral homes. These come out every year, and they are a nice gift from a local business (while at the same time being a nice form of advertising). However, it struck me as ironic that a funeral home would be giving away calendars, because having plenty of time is not what you think of when you think of when you see the words “funeral home.”
The reality is that we are not guaranteed any time here on earth, yet we certainly act like we do, don’t we? We can sometimes act like the foolish rich man who built larger barns to house his wealth, thinking that we have lots of time ahead of us (cf. Luke 12:13-21). We can end up going through each day, not enjoying it or seeing it as an invitation to join in God’s work in the here and now, but rather with an eye toward some future event we have planned. Perhaps we are counting down the days until our next vacation, just trying to get through the next six weeks at work because then we can have some fun for two weeks. Maybe that countdown is a little longer: you know you have seven years, eight months, two weeks, and 3 days until you can retire. It then becomes a matter of keeping your head down, plowing through the present in order to get to the future. Of course, this is an attitude that doesn’t just develop once you’re an adult. I’m sure that many of us can remember how, when we were kids, we wanted time to move ahead much faster. If only we were a teenager…if only I wasn’t in middle school and I was in high school…if only I were sixteen and could drive…if only I were eighteen and was a legal adult…It seems our desire to be in the future, rather than the present, is a battle in which we are constantly engaged.
There is a reason that we aren’t not given access to the specifics about what the future holds in our individual lives. After all, just consider how much we already live in the future, when we don’t have any concrete knowledge of how that future will play out for us; how much more would we do that if we did know what was going to happen to us in one month, one year, or five years? God wants us to be joining Him in His work today, and there is plenty of work to do today, if we’ll just look around us. How much of our immediate terrain do we miss when our eyes are constantly trying to see beyond the horizon? We’re so busy trying to look and plan ahead that we forget we are supposed to be salt and light here and now.
Every now and then, though, God sends us a gentle reminder – like a calendar from a funeral home. Just something to think about…
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