In 2020, during COVID, I was visiting a parishioner through a closed window at what was then called Vero Care Facility. I know that she didn’t watch television. I asked her what she had been doing that afternoon. We “talked’ by writing on pads and holding it up to the window.
She answered: "Reading".
I then asked: "What are you reading?"
She wrote, then held her answer up to the window: "HS"
I had a quizzical look on my face, and so she wrote out what should have been understood: "Holy Scriptures."
At a funeral earlier this month, the service ended with a man on guitar singing a simplistic song:
I'm using my Bible for a road map
Then Commandments they tell me what to do
The twelve disciples are my road signs
And Jesus will take me safely through
The Bible is not that clear, and our road is not that safe, yet our future is in God's care. Perhaps we should start adding the initials D.V. after all our statements of future dreams. D.V. being Latin for "Deo volente" ("God willing ").
Christ reminds us in Matthew 6:25,33, and 34:
I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear... Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.
The Bible was written in a time when the things that usually cause us to think about the future didn't exist. Social Security, IRAs, and pension plans were unheard of. People had little opportunity to schedule next summer's vacation or to think about what they would do after graduation.
The future is filled with possibilities. But to focus primarily on the future allows our lives to become wrapped up in either anxiety or anticipation. Like building your life on the past and on memories, you miss out on here, now, today.
In the final analysis, the parts of time that seem of most concern in the Bible are the present and eternity, as Jesus' words above illustrate. Striving first for the kingdom of God is focusing on both now and striving for God’s eternal life. That quality of life also begins now.
To focus on eternity means to be currently concerned with God. And to focus on the present allows us to respond to God. As C.S. Lewis put it in The Screwtape Letters, "the Present is the point at which time touches eternity." (God would have us be about) "obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure."
May your eternity be found in this moment (D.V.), Tempe'