Living In the Present

For as long as I can remember I have been given to anxiousness. By personality and circumstance it has shaped my thoughts for a lifetime. I can remember all too well the grief stricken fear of being left with my cousins to play for the day at granny’s house. And the sick stomach feeling of entering the first grade. I must have been the only student in the history of the school who cried every day through the first half of the year and started in again entering the second year. Even embarrassment did not keep me from crawling up in Mrs. Ola’s lap for a bit of consoling. Fear tracked me down throughout my childhood.

It’s ironic how childhood problems can follow a person into their adult years. As adults we are much better at covering up but our undealt with issues have a way of resurfacing. So for me it seems that no matter how much I mature, my default is to fall back into the anxious mode.

“Anxiety is the inability to live in the present.” This statement by Mark Yaconelli sounded a chord with me this week. Isn’t that the truth of it? Our worries are almost always about what is happening in the future or probably more accurately about what we perceive might happen in the future. Even our concerns from the past tend to create anxiety over how they might affect our future.

Such a life robs us of being fully alive. It causes us to grow old without having lived. And more often than not it leads us to grab control of people and circumstances in the hope of ordering our world. It’s deadening and unattractive.

Do you ever find yourself in this sinking boat? Jesus comes to us in the storm with words of calm and peace and confidence. "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life…Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?...But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well…Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself."

Jesus’ words remind us to live trustfully in the present not worrying about tomorrow. After all He cares about sparrows and lilies and even grass in the fields. If He is so mindful of such small insignificant matters, how much more His beloved children? Jesus reminds too of where to place our attention. On the heavenly Father...seeking His kingdom and His righteousness. With Him we find our source for living in the present.