Heart Tracks - Living In The Now

"Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near." Isaiah 55:6...."What if all our running around is only our trying to run away from God - the great I AM, present in the present moment?" Ann Voskamp..."Now is being crucified between the thieves of yesterday and tomorrow." Unknown

Too often, maybe most often, we who are His are missing Him in the moment. Missing Him in most of our moments. We become obsessed with what needs to be done as concerns tomorrow, or, paralyzed over what has happened yesterday. We live under the tyranny of those times, and miss Him completely in the present. We cannot live in the moment, and so we tend to miss Him in most of our moments. The old song goes, "He was there all the time," and we know that, but the tyranny of yesterday and tomorrow keep us from experiencing that reality.

I like what Voskamp has to say about all of our running around, our "busyness," and how we can use it to escape Him. Escape having Him deal with the root of all our stress, anxiety, fear, and denial. Busyness and activity can do a fine job of masking all that, keeping us from ever having to deal with it, facing it, which we can only do when we're willing to face Him. It hasn't been lost on me that when Jesus' parents discovered Him missing upon their return to their home after the celebrations in Jerusalem, they discovered Him in the Temple. He told them He "must be about My Father's business." His Father's business was first and foremost, intimacy with Himself. He is so easily lost in our manic activity for Him that misses an intimacy with Him. We fear that because we fear being "found out," all the while not realizing that He has already found us out...yet calls us to Himself in total love.

Yet, we can have a complete absence of outward activity and still miss Him in the moment. Our minds and spirits churn with concerns over so many things. If we're not like Martha in our actions, we are certainly so in our minds....concerned, worked up, worn out, by "so many things." We miss the "one thing" that her sister Mary knew, living in His presence and life. Voskamp writes, "The present moment alone..holds the possibility of coming into the presence of God. Look around, breathe deep, enter into this one moment. Now could be an altar. This time could be a tabernacle.....wherever my feet are is where I can love Him."

If we truly live in His presence, with Him, then wherever we are is Holy ground. Do we treat it as such? Not just in our actions, or words, but in the meditations of our hearts and the thoughts of our minds? Are we living engaged with Him, or disengaged? Do we see our lives as being perpetually lived out upon His altar, tabernacling with Him in all places? No longer living in the bondage of what has been or what might be. Just the now, whatever and wherever that now is, with Him. In the moment, free, alive, victorious, whatever the circumstances might be...right now.

Blessings,
Pastor O