Most of our minds are busy thinking about either the past or the future. Very few of us live fully in the present moment. Yes, there is an appropriate time to remember the past and to contemplate the future but we are not to live in either place. Interestingly, depressed people usually focus on the past, particularly on hurtful experiences. Anxious people usually focus on the future.
What if we lived more fully … in this moment – right here, right now?
Learning to live more fully in the present moment can be quite powerful, lifting our mood, enhancing our relationships and enabling us to concentrate … and positioning ourselves to experience the God who is the great I AM.
Consider this wisdom from the pages of Scripture:
Isaiah 43:18-19. “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
Matthew 6:34. "Do not worry about tomorrow."
2 Corinthians 6:2. "Today is the day of salvation."
Could it be that now is not as empty as we think it to be? Could it be that everything we need is already with us in Christ – right here and right now? Could it be that this moment is as perfect as it can be? The saints of old called this "the sacrament of the present moment." Maybe we miss that, because we tend to be control freaks who are always trying to fix things and make them better (not a bad thing in and of itself, unless our quest for continual improvement becomes an idol and causes us to miss the God who is already here … right now). After all, grace teaches us that this is not a world where we have to work hard for God to notice us. We cannot not be in God's presence. We don't have to strive for it. God already is with us. What we lack is awareness … in this moment.
Could it be that the reason that we never feel full is that we are not embracing and tasting all that already is available to us … in this moment? After all, God is either in this now … or he is nothing at all.
Have we become addicted to adrenaline-rush spirituality … continually craving for another spiritual fix or more goose bumps? Have we made spiritual experience into an idol that we worship at the feet of … missing God in the process?
If our current now is not satisfying, then we are always searching for something else, something more, something new, something different than our present experience.
The truth is that GOD IS. He IS here right now and this moment is full of Him and everything He IS.
No wonder the Psalmist said, "Be still … and know … that I AM … God (Ps.46:10)."
Selah … pause and think about it …