Derailed Thoughts

Living in the Present

July 16th, 2008

This post will be focused on how my faith in God helps me day to day, so it might be a little serious :) Bear with me.

Today has been an amazing day–every second of it has been spent doing something useful or fun (with the exception of the ten minutes I spent trying to fit a bicycle into my car. That could have gone more smoothly). I love days like that! What’s best about today, though, is that it was a day that I felt entirely free of worry. I finished everything on my little Palm Pilot to-do list, and I felt at peace with myself.

I have to admit–I’m a worrier. Always have been. I don’t know if that’s a genetic thing or not, but I know that for as long as I can remember, I’ve always worried about the least important details of life. Some days, I have so many small pressures weighing down on me (at least my mind decides I do) that I will stop and sit to plan my course of action for 30 or 40 minutes. Often, I then worry some more and re-plan the whole thing.

On days like today, I’m able to look at my worrying self and realize what a waste of time worry is. As a matter of fact, this tool of forceful fear is one of the many tools used by the Adversary to stop man’s progression and to limit his use of agency. In The Screwtape Letters, the master devil Screwtape instructs his student Wormwood to clutter his assigned human’s mind with regrets from the past, and with worries about the course of the future–action in the present must be avoided.

The humans live in time but our Enemy 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… Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present…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.

Nothing is more helpful to the Adversary’s plan than worry’s catatonic state of fear. If the bible dictionary teaches that “doubt and fear are opposed to faith,” then the adversary must rejoice to see us fretting over the course of the future.

One simple fact remains–the future is not ours to control. While we may choose in the present (against Screwtape’s wishes) to mold a character that can continue life in greater strength, and while we may strive to do those things that we know are good and right, the entire course of the future is determined by the hand of God.

I write this now mostly for my future benefit, but maybe also for the benefit of anyone who might read this post feeling the same feelings of worry I often feel: God does have a plan. I don’t feel myself walking down the path he has already laid for me every day, though I wish that I was perfectly in tune enough to do so. Every so often, though, the Spirit comes strongly enough that each of us is able to poke through the veil and see a bit more. I think every one of us has had moments when we feel that greater plan rolling forward, and greater power watching over us–some call it fate, but I define it as a loving Father. I know He is there, and that he has no other object in mind but your and my greatest eventual happiness. Because He loves us, He will fulfill His promises to you and me, and He will be there every step of the way. The Psalmist wrote, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

Worries will always come, just as they always have. From here on, however, I think I’m going to stop listening to them–I’m more interested in living in today.