Day 10: Rest from the Future

Do you really want to know what’s going to happen?

What would you do with that information?

Would you receive it?

Personal history tells me I wouldn’t.

Flash a picture of my current self to 18-year-old Beth, and she would not be happy with the sags and scars of her future body.

26-year-old Beth hoped for a girl when she found out she was pregnant for the first time.

27-year-old Beth wouldn’t believe just how many times she would go on to yell at her oldest son after promising him on the day he was born that she never would.

28-year-old Beth was not moving back to her college town. The phrase went something like, “anywhere but Oxford.”

Actually, Beth was supposed to have an adventure out West. Ask her at 20, and she would have told you she was moving to Seattle.

Our present choices come with projections and sometimes questions.

God, can you tell me how this will all work out?

In his grace, no, and thank goodness, no, because I’d receive the information like an outline – all the facts without the richness of what living within those lines is actually like. My present self is limited in that way, and in there lies the difference between knowing something with my mind and knowing something with my life.

This is what I think about when I read Matthew 6, where we are told do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?

Even if I’d been granted future information, I wouldn’t have received it because I couldn’t understand how – yes – I would go on to miss my younger abdomen, but not at the expense of conquering my fear of childbirth. I may look otherwise, but I feel and know now that I am strong. And then there’s those children – male and bashy. We all yell around here. We all apologize. And praise God we live in this small town. When Jesse and a friend got lost in our 10 acres of woods the other day and eventually found their way out, the landscape was familiar enough to lead them back into the mile-square where they were only another mile from home.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Matthew 6:34

I wake up. I pray. I read the news feed. I pray again. Jesus is right. There is enough trouble of its own today, and if I’m going to be a helper, I need to be present.

It is finished. It is good.

Restlessness comes when I divide myself and step past today’s pace into tomorrow’s concerns.

Do not worry.

It’s a command. Behind God’s commands are reasons. Wrapped around those reasons are promises that’ll I never know if I don’t stop insisting for information that’s not mine to have.

Lay tomorrow’s story to rest. Exchange tomorrow’s concerns for today’s. Exchange worry for hope. Exchange a scattered mind for a focused one so you can help. Our world needs help.

Today is enough. Today is where God has you. How wlll you be here today?

We’re talking rest right now on the blog – what it is, why we need it, and how we get it. If you just jumped in, go to Post 1 to catch up. Sign up for the blogs to go straight to your Inbox so you don’t miss any!