...now...not yesterday...

When I consider the end and beginning of another year I think about Jesus, and when I read the Scriptures I see in Jesus His mission to call us to change, to let go of our old self and become a new person — in Him.  And yet I have spent most of my life up to my chin in religion that does not always seem to be as concerned with changing humanity and helping us all become a new creation.   In fact my experience with religion is that it is often largely focused on being impervious and resistant to change.  Religious leaders are evaluated by their willingness to conform to the established theology and practices of the religion.  Being Christian in the Christian church is often about being in love with the past centuries.   Jesus’ mission to change, to be reborn, has been replaced with maintaining religious traditions when Christians were really Christians and God was really God.   The message of Jesus is often replaced by a religion of nostalgia and compliance, not actual transformation.   We still focus on doing old things in old ways.   What I have seen is that we hate living right now, where God is fully present, and instead we focus on living as we always lived.

As I see it, today — right now — is the most important time in the church,

and the most important time in our life, not yesterday, not in a church of nostalgia, and not tomorrow, not in a church where worship attendance is everything.   What’s real is now.   We need to be born again — NOW!   We need to be transformed — NOW!

Consider this moment in the life of Jesus, and do you remember what He said?: “6 Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, 7 a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. 8 But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, ‘Why this waste? 9 For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.’ 10 But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, ‘Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. 11 For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have Me’”  Matthew 26:6-11.     This woman was living in the moment, while the disciples were living in the future.  There is a reason why the poor will always be with us!   We will always have someone who needs our transforming love — NOW!   

Living in the fully present moment is to taste something really real.  The problem with living in the nostalgia of the past is that it provides us with no image of the eternal, and so we cannot live in an eternal now.  Living in the now enables us to practice for heaven!   Living in the now enables us to see that how we do anything is, finally, how we do everything!

Take time today in prayer and live in the now! Make this a New Year’s Resolution!

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” Isaiah 43:18-19.

“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil”  Ephesians 5:15-16.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” Romans 12:2.

“Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes”  James 4:14.