"To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven."
-- Ecclesiastes 3:1
I was walking barefoot in our yard today. It had previously been raining and the grey gravel-like soil in the path was saturated. I could feel every grain underneath my feet. As I walked past our ancient Mahogany tree on my way back to the house, I paused for a moment of wonder… this is the context that God placed me in; this my home. Every branch, every fallen flower from our vibrant orange Spathodia tree… each animal and each family member I live with. Nothing about my home is perfect – from the building itself to each of us living inside it; but it is my home…
See, I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like to “just look” – I like to touch, to engage, to feel and embrace. I can never understand these places where you go to see, but you’re not allowed to touch; what’s the use of a petting zoo where you are not allowed to pet? No, I want to feel the breath of life and the heartbeat with my hands.
But one thing I have always wondered about myself is that, despite my natural inclination to engage, when it comes to every day life, I end up “looking” through the glass. Instead of living and engaging the people around me, I busy myself with other things to take my mind off the present and hope for a better tomorrow. So far, I’ve lived my life as though I’m in a “transit zone”: knowing that the season I’m in is only temporary and one day (hopefully!) soon I will arrive at my destination.
For me, it’s been over 30 years and I still have not reached that destination. I’m silently sitting with my packed bags next to me waiting for my “future” to begin. Maybe I’m just extreme; many people don’t struggle to enter in to the moment. But then, I’m not talking about a moment; I’m talking about the mundane life that we’re currently living due lockdown, or whatever season is at hand. Waiting. Just waiting for life to begin again. The mind boggles that for us Zimbabweans, we’ve spent two months short of an entire year just waiting. And to be frank, with no end in sight. When will my life begin??!
But this morning as I walked outside, it was as though I became present to my circumstances. This is not the transit zone: this is today’s destination – the place where God has ordained me to be. I’m not to be concerned about tomorrow: what God has for me today is to reside in my home with my family under lockdown. What is going to work on my character is being home with my family under lockdown. And may I stretch it to the extreme and dare to even say, what is going to prepare me for heaven one day is being here with my family under lockdown: as I grow patience, trust, forgiveness... faith in the Father who loves me….
The question is: will I ENGAGE the season? Will I REDEEM the time and SEIZE the moment? My parents, with whom I am staying at the moment (now you can understand better why I have looked upon it as a transit zone
) won’t be around forever. My niece and nephew and sister who is a transitioning single Mom won’t be living with me here in the “transit zone” forever either. Even though it feels like it’s been forever, before I know it, this season would have expired.
Will I look back with regret, having never touched, tasted and experienced the heart-beat of the season? Would I have escaped the season having put on my ‘latex gloves’ and remained sterile and unchanged, having kept a “safe” distance from those who might affect my life? Perhaps that is the very reason the season is lingering: perhaps it is God’s longsuffering and patience with me, with us – with all who can identify with what I’m saying – so that we don’t miss out on the growth He has for us?
What if… what if God has placed me here to get my feet wet and my hands dirty with the people around me? What if this is exactly what He has ordered for today? To love my family, to serve them, to put my thing aside in favour of theirs… to learn what it is to lay down my life as Christ laid down His…
As I walked through the soil this morning, I thought of Jesus. I thought about His journeying down here to become One of us.
He, too, knew that this life was a transit zone, and yet He engaged every human that came His way… He lived, He loved, He entered in to the moment and exhausted both it and Himself. He left nothing in his tank and saved nothing for the next day. He lived… and died… each day BY FAITH in the Father who replenished and resurrected Him. Imagine if Jesus decided not to get His hands dirty in His surroundings? What if He passed through this life trying to keep “unstained” by us mere mortals in view of His next season of going back to Heaven? No. In Jesus, we see how God designed us to live: pouring ourselves out each and every day in trust and utter abandon.
Why would He do this? What is the difference between me, who is so scared of “entering in” and losing myself in today in favour of “saving myself” for my future (if that makes any sense!) – and Jesus, who emptied Himself every day as though there was no tomorrow? It seems like quite a contradiction!! The chief difference, I believe, is that I am living my life in FEAR: fear of tomorrow, where Jesus lived/lives a life of FAITH: that GOD WILL TAKE CARE OF TOMORROW. When I fear tomorrow, I will never exhaust today.
I don’t know if I’m writing this for myself, or for the one or two people that might be able to identify with me, but I hear the Voice of the Spirit beckoning me to come to the Father with my fears and my cares for the future and lay them at His Feet… to trust that there is HOPE in my future and that He has plans to PROSPER me and not to harm me… that the challenges of today will produce in me the character of tomorrow. Do I believe that Jesus has REDEEMED my life from destruction (Psalm 103), and though I might pass through the valley of the shadow of death, I don’t need to fear the evil of today or tomorrow because HE IS WITH ME? Do I believe that God is in control and He holds not just me, but my future in His hands?
I choose to believe again; I choose to live in the moment of today and to surrender the tomorrow that I have been so concerned about into His loving Hands…
-- Ecclesiastes 3:1
I was walking barefoot in our yard today. It had previously been raining and the grey gravel-like soil in the path was saturated. I could feel every grain underneath my feet. As I walked past our ancient Mahogany tree on my way back to the house, I paused for a moment of wonder… this is the context that God placed me in; this my home. Every branch, every fallen flower from our vibrant orange Spathodia tree… each animal and each family member I live with. Nothing about my home is perfect – from the building itself to each of us living inside it; but it is my home…
See, I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like to “just look” – I like to touch, to engage, to feel and embrace. I can never understand these places where you go to see, but you’re not allowed to touch; what’s the use of a petting zoo where you are not allowed to pet? No, I want to feel the breath of life and the heartbeat with my hands.
But one thing I have always wondered about myself is that, despite my natural inclination to engage, when it comes to every day life, I end up “looking” through the glass. Instead of living and engaging the people around me, I busy myself with other things to take my mind off the present and hope for a better tomorrow. So far, I’ve lived my life as though I’m in a “transit zone”: knowing that the season I’m in is only temporary and one day (hopefully!) soon I will arrive at my destination.
For me, it’s been over 30 years and I still have not reached that destination. I’m silently sitting with my packed bags next to me waiting for my “future” to begin. Maybe I’m just extreme; many people don’t struggle to enter in to the moment. But then, I’m not talking about a moment; I’m talking about the mundane life that we’re currently living due lockdown, or whatever season is at hand. Waiting. Just waiting for life to begin again. The mind boggles that for us Zimbabweans, we’ve spent two months short of an entire year just waiting. And to be frank, with no end in sight. When will my life begin??!
But this morning as I walked outside, it was as though I became present to my circumstances. This is not the transit zone: this is today’s destination – the place where God has ordained me to be. I’m not to be concerned about tomorrow: what God has for me today is to reside in my home with my family under lockdown. What is going to work on my character is being home with my family under lockdown. And may I stretch it to the extreme and dare to even say, what is going to prepare me for heaven one day is being here with my family under lockdown: as I grow patience, trust, forgiveness... faith in the Father who loves me….
The question is: will I ENGAGE the season? Will I REDEEM the time and SEIZE the moment? My parents, with whom I am staying at the moment (now you can understand better why I have looked upon it as a transit zone
) won’t be around forever. My niece and nephew and sister who is a transitioning single Mom won’t be living with me here in the “transit zone” forever either. Even though it feels like it’s been forever, before I know it, this season would have expired.Will I look back with regret, having never touched, tasted and experienced the heart-beat of the season? Would I have escaped the season having put on my ‘latex gloves’ and remained sterile and unchanged, having kept a “safe” distance from those who might affect my life? Perhaps that is the very reason the season is lingering: perhaps it is God’s longsuffering and patience with me, with us – with all who can identify with what I’m saying – so that we don’t miss out on the growth He has for us?
What if… what if God has placed me here to get my feet wet and my hands dirty with the people around me? What if this is exactly what He has ordered for today? To love my family, to serve them, to put my thing aside in favour of theirs… to learn what it is to lay down my life as Christ laid down His…
As I walked through the soil this morning, I thought of Jesus. I thought about His journeying down here to become One of us.
He, too, knew that this life was a transit zone, and yet He engaged every human that came His way… He lived, He loved, He entered in to the moment and exhausted both it and Himself. He left nothing in his tank and saved nothing for the next day. He lived… and died… each day BY FAITH in the Father who replenished and resurrected Him. Imagine if Jesus decided not to get His hands dirty in His surroundings? What if He passed through this life trying to keep “unstained” by us mere mortals in view of His next season of going back to Heaven? No. In Jesus, we see how God designed us to live: pouring ourselves out each and every day in trust and utter abandon.
Why would He do this? What is the difference between me, who is so scared of “entering in” and losing myself in today in favour of “saving myself” for my future (if that makes any sense!) – and Jesus, who emptied Himself every day as though there was no tomorrow? It seems like quite a contradiction!! The chief difference, I believe, is that I am living my life in FEAR: fear of tomorrow, where Jesus lived/lives a life of FAITH: that GOD WILL TAKE CARE OF TOMORROW. When I fear tomorrow, I will never exhaust today.
I don’t know if I’m writing this for myself, or for the one or two people that might be able to identify with me, but I hear the Voice of the Spirit beckoning me to come to the Father with my fears and my cares for the future and lay them at His Feet… to trust that there is HOPE in my future and that He has plans to PROSPER me and not to harm me… that the challenges of today will produce in me the character of tomorrow. Do I believe that Jesus has REDEEMED my life from destruction (Psalm 103), and though I might pass through the valley of the shadow of death, I don’t need to fear the evil of today or tomorrow because HE IS WITH ME? Do I believe that God is in control and He holds not just me, but my future in His hands?
I choose to believe again; I choose to live in the moment of today and to surrender the tomorrow that I have been so concerned about into His loving Hands…
-
1
-
1
- Show all
