Why There is No Future in the Past

What do you do when things seem to be unraveling? When suddenly or overnight or out of nowhere or without explanation something in your circle of influence runs you over? A child, a marriage, a relationship, an opportunity, a job goes south?

Like it or not, this 'out of the blue' feeling is the reality that when the present isn't effectively managed, it has a way of becoming a past that builds and builds into 'the wave' that now seems ready to sweep away both your present and your future. It's like you're standing on the beach called 'the present' and you get washed away by an unexpected tsunmani called 'the past.'

Can you relate?

The hard to swallow truth is that there usually is no "suddenly." The past is, more often than not, something of our own creation. There are exceptions to that, for sure.

Regardless of who or how the past happened, it often ends up determining your future. "There and then" keeps you from living "here and now." It's not that the future is determined in the sense that we can't escape it no matter what, it's just that our past has become the most influential voice in our present. And so we futilely search for a future in the past.

As a result, we feel helpless against 'the wave.'

Enter the Gospel--the good news--of Jesus. It is the announcement that Jesus has taken the past and overwhelmed and overcome it, calming it's angry waters.

Paul, writer of much of the New Testament says it this way: "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them." Jesus silences the voice of the past and invites us to live here and now in light of God's future; A future full of hope and possibility.

Can you see it?

God the Leader

I had this email interchange with a friend the other day. I usually think best by writing, so this got me thinking:

I've been thinking about God and leadership lately. For the whole earth to rejoice when God reigns, he really must be the most splendid leader and provide the most amazing leadership. I don't think I've ever thought about God from that perspective until lately. Leadership can produce (in the people following the leader) anxiety, tears, fear, dread, tension and that's just my list! For most of us, that is our picture of leadership. There is some form of pressure inherent in the "I'm following this person" system. And so we think that must be true of God. If there aren't going to be any tears in the age to come, and if one (significant) source of tears is leadership and what happens in and with it, then God's leadership must be absolutely brilliant for there to be no tears.

I think one of the reasons the whole idea of God's leadership is foreign to most of us is because the Gospel (as commonly presented) has nothing to do with it!
It is entirely a legal framework wherein some arbitrary payment is made for my sins making it possible for me to go to heaven when I die.

There is nothing in that description of good news that makes me think about what that future might be. My fears and natural instinct for self-preservation are played to.
But Jesus message: "Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand" is ALL about God's leadership and reign. God's reign is here and it is unspeakably good. All of our emphasis is on the repenting (and we do need to do that), but again, there is no vision for what life can be in that schema. Jesus, a great leader, cast the most compelling vision of all time--a vision for life under the rule and reign of God.