Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Where you are is NOT where you're gonna be

Perspective stinks.  That is, our perspective as humans, principally because of how limited it is.  We’re constrained in ways we can’t see.  Time, for example, limits us.  We can only live in now.  I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing.  The Bible itself, specifically tells us to live in today because that’s all we can handle and control (Matthew 6:33-34).  And you know me … if the Bible tells it, I believe it and try to follow it.

In other ways the living in the now hurts.  Especially when things aren’t going the way we want them to … now isn’t fun.  We can think about yesterday and hope for tomorrow … but we’re stuck living in today.  Stuck in the time of pain, disappointment, heartache, frustration, whatever.  Stuck.

But … in my reading this week, God helped me see hope in the midst of that stark reality.  As I covered Zechariah 12 – 14, Malachi 1 – 4, Psalms 129 – 135, and Jeremiah 30 – 36, I came across Jeremiah 31:2 – 5, which reads:

This is what the Lord says:  “Those who survive the coming destruction will find blessings even in the barren land, for I will give rest to the people of Israel.”  Long ago the Lord said to Israel:  “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love.  With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.  I will rebuild you, my virgin Israel.  You will again be happy and dance merrily with your tambourines.  Again you will plant your vineyards on the mountains of Samaria and eat from your own gardens there.

We are limited in our perspective to today.  God is not.  God deals with today, tomorrow and yesterday all at the same time.  More importantly, He allows us the ability to use His ability to supplant our inability to live with a perspective outside of today.

In this passage, God is speaking to Jeremiah and through Jeremiah to the Israelites to provide hope in the midst of a horrific time in their history.  They’ve been captured and exiled in a foreign land and in chapter 29, one of my favorite sections of the Bible, He tells Jeremiah to pass along the message to the Israelites to settle in … that they should not expect to be rescued just yet.  He planned to rescue them, sure, but there would be 70 years until He did.  In their here and now … their “today” … it was a tragic realization.  No doubt where they were was in a place of hysteria, regret, and agony.

However, in the midst of that “today” and that “here and now” there was a tomorrow that was born yesterday.  Again, to God it’s all the same, and it arises in His words to / through Jeremiah … some amazing and incongruous words at that … “those who survive the coming destruction will find blessings even in the barren land.”  Huh???  So, they were to grab hope in the promise of “surviving” destruction in order to get to a barren land?  How’s that possible?  Two ways … “for I will give rest” and “I have loved you … with an everlasting love.”  He will (in the future) give us rest because He has already loved us (past tense) with an everlasting (future / forever) love.

No matter where we’re at in what we’re going through … we’re stuck in today.  God is never limited to today.  He is always in the process of giving us rest and loving us everlastingly.  He is at the end of our today ready to receive us and deliver us into a blessed tomorrow.  That’s not to say that we all live happily ever after … in this life.  But if we’re His child by faith in Jesus, we have eternity to look forward to, and in that sense we have the 100 percent assurance of a happily ever after.

So, what do we take from this?

Maybe we’re in a troubling or confusing time.  Maybe it seems like it’s never gonna get better.  Maybe it just feels like we’re in a funk or relegated to the background.  Or, maybe our today feels cruddy … like it’s the same as yesterday and no different than tomorrow will be.  God lives outside our today and says, “don’t worry, I’m here yesterday, today AND tomorrow, and I am loving you in all of them.  Forget yesterday, in faith get through today, and let Me handle tomorrow.”

We might feel stuck, but God always has us in process … in process of growing us, teaching us, preparing us, and mostly, LOVING us.  He knows what He’s doing and He’s not doing it for nothing.  Somewhere down the road, our exile will end, and He will bring us home to our equivalent of Jerusalem.  Later … eventually, in eternity, He’ll bring us to our REAL Jerusalem.

He’s always at work, He’s always bringing us through what it feels like we’re stuck in.   Our job is just to prayerfully trust Him, taking Him at His word, and knowing that wherever we are today is NOT where we’ll be tomorrow.  Either because He’s going to rescue us, or because He’s using today to better prepare us for tomorrow.  He doesn’t do accidents, so He must have a purpose.  The more we lean on Him and trust He’s got tomorrow, the more we can brave the perils of today.

What areas of your life feel like you’re stuck in today?  What pains feel like they’ll never abate?  Ask Him to reassure you that it’s only today and that He has tomorrow covered.  Remember that He “will give rest” and that His love for you (even in the struggle) is an “everlasting love.”  Everlasting.  Love.

Handling today, trusting for tomorrow …


MR

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