Shaping the Future Today!
God wants us to recognize the importance of tomorrow by giving us today, each day! He desires that we plan our future because we have to live there. And the way one plans for the future is tied up to how one manages the present. C.S. Lewis rightfully observed that “the present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.”
Scripture is clear in its warnings that one should not worry about tomorrow. It is also equally emphatic in its challenges regarding making plans, following guidelines, understanding the times, so as to face intelligently and courageously each new surprise that comes, good or bad, as we embark into the future which is being shaped.
As a modern Christian hymn expresses it, “we build a new tomorrow on plans we make today!” Each new day reaches its end, but it also merges into a new tomorrow with all the opportunities it brings.
In the words of Loren B. Mead, “God always calls us to be more than we have been!” We cannot stop the clock, much less can we return to the good ol’ days. The movement which God desires for each of His children is always in a forward direction. The apostle Paul emphatically addressed that issue with regard to himself: “forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal…” (Philippians 3:13b-14a).
David Livingstone, in the 19th century, recorded in his journals something I have adopted as a personal motto: “I am prepared to go anywhere, as long as it is forward.” A commitment to the future is important because it is there and then that one’s goals are realized, one’s projects reach completion, even if inadequately, on account of human sin.
The Christian should never fear the future because of Him Who controls the present and is leading him or her into many new tomorrows. And since God is sovereign, none of His children need fear what lies ahead. God has already defined the future; only getting there is still filled with puzzles and surprises.
Yet, it is He alone Who leads us there, regardless of how difficult the journey. He teaches us to hold on to what shall last and discard all that is provisional. This is a posture of genuine faith which, by its very nature, requires taking risks.
On earth we are confronted with too many temporal realities. We need to hold on to what lasts and gradually leads into the future, there to remain with us beyond time, into all eternity.
Jacques Ellul helps us put this into proper perspective, with his statement that “A Christian cannot have any other vision of the world in which he lives than an apocalyptic one; and, knowing very well that historically it is not necessarily the end of the world, he must act at every moment as if this moment were his last.”
