You might be wondering to yourself why you have been coming to my blog and not seeing much change…not much new information…no new writing. My only excuse, and it is not a good one, is that life has just been too, too busy.
Between planning a wedding out of state (June 18), buying a new house, working with carpenters, plumbers and electricians…and oh yeah..my job with college ministry, and preaching every week…life has been really busy. I have experienced busyness before. I have experienced life when you feel like you can’t possibly make one more decision, or do one more task, otherwise you may just mentally break down. But this is really the first time that I have had this many, life changing, life altering events…all happening at once. Getting married, buying a house is a lot of life changing. And oh yeah…I forgot to mention. I’m starting a Master’s degree at Fuller Theological Seminary in September in Marital and Family Therapy. I will still be the full-time college pastor here at Bel Air, but I believe God has been calling me a long time to get more professional training in counseling.
So life is busy. All of us are busy. Many of us have plans, and we are working towards those plans. Some of us have even put “life on hold” while we work towards our plans, toward our future. We have two year plans. We have four year plans. We tend to live life in blocks of time, or we tend to not live it at all unless we move past that block of time into what we consider life.
We say things like, “As soon as I graduate, then I will get a real job.” “I will grow up when I graduate.” Or, “I will date someone more seriously, or who is more right for me when I get out of this phase.” We all say things like this.
But I have begun to realize an important lesson recently. I have always thought this way, but I have never really lived this way. Our life, our living…it is now. It is not in the future, it is not when we have our act together, it is not when we have “our ducks in a row.” But most of us instead, tend to wait for those things to happen.
I had the privelege of having lunch yesterday with Hugh Hewitt. Hugh is someone I respect, and I wanted his advice on some things, and I wanted to thank him for all his help. And I realized, Hugh is a busy guy. But he is not someone who uses busyness to keep him from the daily living of life. He is embracing life right now, and going after the things that are important to him, and pursuing the things that he wants to accomplish. And after our lunch I felt encouraged about pursuing more immediately some of the goals and desires that I have for more life. I could wait, and put them off, and hope for better conditions, or I could pursue them now. Rearrange my priorities so that they align more correctly with my desires. Hopefully never removing my relationship with God, my future wife, or my family from the top of that list.
I may have watched one of the worst movies I have ever seen on Sunday night. I went and watched A Lot Like Love. Okay..maybe it’s not the worst ever, but it’s pretty bad. You judge for yourself. But there was something I walked away with from that movie, once again as a reminder to me that God is sovereign and works in mysterious ways. But one of the main themes in the movie was that life is what is happening to you right now. Life is not what we put off, and hope that the future will be much better. Ashton Kutcher’s character has his six year plan layed out, and once he accomplishes that, then he can work on other things. He can go on with life. But the problem is, life keeps passing him by. Because he is waiting, he misses out on the people, and the things that are right before him.
It was a reminder to me that life is what we have before us. It is our friends, our family, our work, our passions, and hobbies. It is not what we don’t have, and our waiting to someday attain. As a Christian, I do live in hopeful expectation of the future, of living in the presence of God for eternity. But as a Christian, God has called me to embrace life right now..in its fullest, and to live it abundantly. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
Embrace where God has you right now, and don’t keep waiting for the future to happen to you.
