Looking to Now, Directions to Here

So often we find ourselves wanting the next thing, or looking back on the "better days" in our past, when things were easy or life seemed simpler. The reality is if we boarded a shiny beeping time-traveler and re-visited our past days, we would be as accosted by trails and tribulations as we are in the present...and will be in the future.

We often fail to be content with where we are now, fail to live completely in the here and now because the future looks so much brighter, or we want to revisit and reclaim the past.

But love and life are in the present, not the future or the past.

I recently read a book by Brother Lawrence, and it in he said, 

"I'm doing now what I will do for all eternity. I am blessing God, praising Him, adoring Him, and loving Him with all my heart."

This is the perspective with which we should be living. It's easy to look to the past and think, "oh life wasn't as busy and I was able to spend more time with friends, family, God," "I was a better Christian then," "I was this," I was that," while these things may be true, we are seeing the past with a shining, golden glow that would fade if we were to revisit those actual moments. We think the future will carry a lighter work load, we say "if" and "when" for the day when life will be easier and we long for those time. "When I get married," "when I graduate high school, college, grad school," "when I start my job," "when I get a new job," "when I buy a house," "when I have kids," with each life step we think everything will be perfect. Our minds dwell there, our hearts lust for these times, instead of the present, the moment. 

Reality is the old saying that there is no time like the present. 

We should not be waiting for some other time to live. To praise God, to love God, to serve God. It's not when we graduate and have more free time. It's not when we have a different life stage that somehow presents less struggle or more time that then we can live to the fullest and follow God and be better people, better Christians, better friends, better parents, better whatever. 

It's now. Right now we should be blessing, praising, adoring, loving, serving, giving, sacrificing, living for God. At work, in school, at home, with family, with friends. In busy times, in easy times. In pain, in joy. In sorrow, in gladness. In simple, in hectic. In stressed, in relaxed. In everything, our hearts and souls should be directed at the King.