Living Presently

"I will choose you...Then I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding." 

- Jeremiah 3:14

My anxiety, denial, and doubt have been building up to this point. Walking into the house, I held my breath in hesitation. It seemed as if I had landed myself into an episode of Real World: Christian edition. Real World Houston: Eight Girls, One Bathroom.

I, as well as, eight girls and seven guys, are interning for Houston's First Baptist Mission's Department. What does that means...I am not sure. I couldn't even tell you what were doing, because we don't even know half the time. We climb into two minivans, and then suddenly arrive at a destination. The idea here is to force us to live in the moment.

At first I thought it was stupid. I don't really consider myself a controlling, or even remotely organized person. But something is really frustrating about not even having a daily agenda. My immediate reaction was "How am I going to know what to wear?"

As I was driving today, I realized why God had put, what I considered to be a ridiculous and impractical idea, into our leader's head.

I live in the future.

C.S Lewis writes in The Screwtape Letters,

 "Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time — for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men’s affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead."

This is my sin that has me shackled in fear, and doubt. Money for my has always been an uncertainty. How much I will need to pay for school, a car, to fix my car, to live. How will I get it. Will I make enough. This fear of the future, makes me stress, it makes me anxious, it makes me overwork to the point that I will abandon God in order to procure a safe future.

But there is something deeply valuable about living in the present.

'The humans live in time but our Enemy(God) destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present — either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure."

So as I struggle to accept living in the present, I pray that I can experience what it means to really trust in God. Meanwhile the struggle to share a house with eight girls and sometimes seven boys, is coming along a lot easier. My roommates are amazing. And I really mean that. Our leaders told us the first day that believed we were picked, not here by accident, but chosen by God. And after I read Jeremiah, and heard everyone's testimony I realized they were right. We have so many random things in common, there is no way it was an accident. While were all pretty different, in terms of backgrounds, and personalities I can see Christ working in all of us.