25 “Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? 27 Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? … 33 Instead, desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore, stop worrying about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:25-27, 33-34 CEB)
I know a lot of people who worry about the future. Time is funny that way, we so often want to know what is going to happen, but we can only truly live for this present moment.
This reality is emphasized in a story I recently came across from the book Too Small to Ignore, by Wess Stafford (former President of Compassion International). In the book, he tells a story from his childhood on the Ivory Coast of Africa. There was a village visited by a convoy of French colonial officials for a government survey. Their questions had to do with “expectations of the future.”
Stafford writes, “The chief and his tribal elders tried to explain to their exasperated visitors that they really didn’t know the answers to those kinds of questions, because the future had not yet arrived. When the time came to pass, then the results would be apparent.” This, to be sure, made the officials less than pleased. And they left, in a huff.
That day, at dusk, the village gathered in the chief’s courtyard. He said,
“I want to talk to the children tonight.
We are not like them,” the chief said. “To them time is everything… the smaller that men can measure the day, the angrier they seem to be.
The present is now—the days we live today. This is God’s gift to us. It is meant to be enjoyed and lived to the fullest. The present will flow by us, of course, and become the past. That is the way of a river, and that is the way of time.
Those men who were here today cannot wait for the future to arrive. They crane their necks to see around the bend in the river. They cannot see it any better than we can, but they try and try. For some reason, it is very important for them to know what is coming toward them. They want to know it so badly that they have no respect for the river itself. They thrash their way out into the present in order to see more around the bend.
They miss so much of the joy of today all around them.
Did you notice that as they stormed into our village, they didn’t notice it is the best of the mango season?
Though we offered them peanuts, they did not even taste them.
They did not hear the birds in the trees or the laughter in the marketplace.
We touched them with our hands, but they did not really see us.
They miss much of the present time, because all they care about is the unknowable, the future… The present is all we can fully know and experience…”
In this passage from Matthew, as Jesus teaches about worry, he reminds us to “desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness.” Like the chief in the story points out, this involves focusing on the present, fully embracing the now. Many people tend to miss out on what is happening right now because their focus is either on tomorrow or yesterday.
Psalm 118 reminds us, “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it” (ESV).
These words frame each day with hope and possibility. They remind us that now is the only moment there is, and that in this holy moment we can begin again as God’s companions in healing the world.
Will you pray with me?
God of change and glory, God of time and space,
In this holy moment, give us your grace, receive our worries,
Let us live this moment with joy and affirmation.
Let us share love and create beauty,
Revealing you to those around us.
We trust that you will inhabit our tomorrows,
In the same way you were with us in the past,
And in the same way you are with us in this present moment.
Amen.
-Pastor Shawn