These are some thoughts that came together today at work while engaged in some awesome conversations with my clients. If you like conversations....it's hard to find a better profession than mine.
Is there any way for us to break free from this framing story that is so predominant here in America? Plan your future...think ahead...set goals...and if you don't, we'll make you feel like a fool.
I think there is and I think to really live free it is very necessary to rethink all of this.
If everything beyond this moment is only an imagined uncertain future, does living like we can plan it all out even make sense? If all we have is right now, living in the past and yes even planning our tomorrows can cause us much trouble. Much trouble that is, in the things that count with God. Here is a big problem that I think it causes in most people. We all too often miss what is right in front of us in the moment.
Here is why this is so important. Love only exists RIGHT NOW. It's not in the past and it is not in tomorrow. If only the love found through freedom in Christ can turn things around, it seems living in the now would be of great importance? If I am thinking about tomorrow or the past all the time, how many moments do I miss? I'm guessing it would be more than I would like to know?
Too many people miss out, myself included, when I live anywhere other than wide awake in the moment. With this being so true, it seems to me that we might want to rethink this whole concept of living so much of our life somewhere we don't even have?
4 comments:
Sounds good to me, Kent. I just LOVE how this plays out when you're walking it out. I feel so much more free now to be open and aware of stuff that God is saying to me, that I would be closed off to if I was living in any way other than listening for his voice to know what to do next.
I have always felt terribly sorry for the extra cultural burden that American Christians carry - all that extra stuff that leads you off the path because it's got God's name slapped on it - as if this life isn't difficult enough to lead anyway without all of those strong strong misconceptions being thrown at you every day by the Christian culture along with the Empire.
Good thoughts dude
Cheers :)
Sue
Hello Sue.
Christianity as the legitamating voice and support for the American way does create such a difficult situation. It feels to me that most still don't consider that there might be something wrong with this.
What makes it even more difficult, is to think that much of the pursecution that boils to the surface against people who attempt to focus attention on this fact, comes cloaked in christianity.
Greg Boyd, the author of the book The Myth of a Christian Nation does a great job making this argument. He will be interviewed on the CNN's special God's Warriors Thursday night August 23 and this is what he will be discussing.
"Plan your future...think ahead...set goals...and if you don't, we'll make you feel like a fool."
is THAT what I'm supposed to be doing?!? LOL!
Yeah. I remember when I used to do quite a bit of that (thinking ahead thing). I don't know HOW MANY precious moments of life alive in the NOW I gave up... "planning" a future that just ran it's own course anyway. In fact when I think about it... the moments that MOST shaped and affected my "future" in any substantitive way ... were those precious moments I had auctualy spent ALIVE DOING THINGS in the Now.
The many moments in my "past" that I spent in the "now" ... wound up being the ones that actually shaped my "future".
I use "the NOW" as interchangable with "eternity". It's the only place where the "living" takes place.
I love what you said Kent that "Love only exists RIGHT NOW. It's not in the past and it is not in tomorrow."
I think if we TRULY follow Jesus' command to "live in Love"...
it then AUTOMATICALLY follows suit that we will live in "the Now".
Could it be that "the Kingdom of God on earth" is ACTUALLY the NOW moment?
eternity on earth. That is why I'm always saying things like "jump into the moment"... "be alive!". Then EVERYTHING around you literally changes ... because you have entered into the REALM OF LIFE. The rigid "rules" of the world do not apply there. Life becomes a supernatural wonder there. Alive... swimming free... in the Spirit of God... which is the supernatural glory of TRANSFORMATIONAL Love. The things we see there ALIVE IN THE SEA/SEE of God's Spirit... in each and every moment ... literally change and transform our "physical" reality (as sort of... united "side-by side" effect).
Did Jesus not say...
"seek ye the Kingdom FIRST... and all other things shall be added unto that/you" "do not worry about tomorrow... for today brings enough troubles of its own."
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The only reason I haven't been commenting on all your recent postings is cause I feel stupid going ... "yeah! right on! I'm with you!" over and over and over again... like some silly cheer leader! lol.
Sometimes there's just no reason to try and add to something that already holds a sort of dynamic completion in and of itself.
Stacey, I had added the passage of scripture....Seek first the kingdom...in the post at first and chose to remove it because I figured that it would pop into minds anyway.
There is another passage asking why we say that we are going to do such and such with so and so in the future when we have no idea what the future holds? I think it is an indication of being ran by fear which is an indications of an absence of trust in Father to take care of the necessities of life.
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