The Problems With Being Over-Prepared

I like to be organised.

 

I don't mean just a little bit organised, I mean completely, utterly, totally organised.  I like to be prepared for a range of events; I like to anticipate alternative outcomes and I like to feel that I would know how to react or respond to each of them.

 

To this end, I am often thinking about the future - I will run through things in my mind which could occur tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or even several years from now.

 

I like to be prepared.

 

But sometimes this obsession with the future leads me to forget about what's going on right here, right now.  I end up thinking so much about what might happen, that I forget to live in what is happening.  I worry too much about tomorrow that I forget to enjoy today.

 

Jesus warns against this fretting about the future in his sermon on the mount.  I love the beauty of this verse -

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.  God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes."

 

[Matthew 6:34 MSG]

 

The thing about tomorrow is that we have no idea what it will hold.  And I can imagine a thousand different possibilities, but I won't know if I am right until they do - or don't - happen.

 

There is no point me fretting and worrying and 'preparing', and wasting time doing all of these things, when I don't know if the things I am preparing for will actually come to pass.

 

Instead, I want to learn to give my entire attention to God right now - to live in today and to entrust tomorrow to Him.

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow Never Arrives

I have just read this brilliant, but lengthy passage in a book called 'Cold Tangerines' [by Shauna Niequist], that I wanted to share:

 

I have always, essentially, been waiting.  Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have.  In my head, I was always one step away.  In high school, I was biding my time until I could become the college version of myself, the one my mind could see so clearly.  In college, the post-college “adult” person was always looming in front of me, smarter, stronger, more organized.  Then the married person, then the person I’d become when we have kids.  For twenty years, literally, I have waited to become the thin version of myself, because that’s when life will really begin.  And through all that waiting, here I am.  My life is passing, day by day, and I am waiting for it to start.  I am waiting for that time, that person, that event when my life will finally begin.

I love movies about “The Big Moment” – the game or the performance or the wedding day or the record deal, the stories that split time with that key event, and everything is reframed, before it and after it, because it has changed everything.  I have always wanted this movie-worthy event, something that will change everything and grab me out of this waiting game into the whirlwind in front of me.  I cry and cry at these movies, because I am still waiting for my own big moment.  I had visions of life as an adventure, a thing to be celebrated and experienced, but all I was doing was going to work and coming home, and that wasn’t what it looked like in the movies.

I can completely empathise with her thoughts.  It is so easy to set things up in our lives as signposts or markers - things which, when reached or achieved, will satisfy us and complete us.

 

But the problem with waiting for tomorrow is that tomorrow never arrives.

 

These are our lives and we're living them right now.

 

Our lives are full of adventures which can be celebrated and experienced - if we choose to look for them and embrace them.  They are made up of lots of tiny 'Big Moments'. 

 

 

"God's Spirit beckons.  There are things to do and places to go!  This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life.  It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?"  God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are.  We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children."

 

[Romans 8:14-16 MSG]

 

Our lives have begun. We need to live them.