Paths to Wise Living
Awake!
A confession: It’s been easy to put life on hold the last few months.
Sleepwalking through life afflicts many today. It’s a sure way of missing life eternal. By eternal I don’t mean length of time but quality of life with God.
Paul staggers us with this reminder, … “once we were darkness but now we are light and to live as children of light.” (Ephesians 5:8ff) Then this, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” With all the turmoil around it’s tempting to sleep walk through life, going through the motions! Or we can trust Jesus for life abundant. We can practice resurrection life now.
Which will it be?
Old age has this temptation: live in the past, rest on your laurels. We mustn’t. “Leave the past behind,” said Paul. We can’t live in the future. We have only the present. Training to live in the now yields fruit and growth in us. Every moment becomes holy!
Wake up! Don’t you see? We are the eyes, hands, feet of Christ in our world! Right now!
How do I love Thee? Let me count the ways! G. M. Hopkins said it this way:
We are God’s eyes, hands and feet and through us
“Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”
Wow! Are you awake enough to see that Christ is playing just around the corner from your house as one of those 10,000 places? Will you play there too?
So wake up to eternal living now. Know why? Because eternity is already in session.
Living in the present looks like this:
Obey the present voice of conscience!
That is, become aware that God in you is speaking. Your challenge? To listen, ask, and do the next right thing. In each circumstance, ask “what the next right thing to do?” Eternal living demands this kind of diligence
Accept your present cross!
We’re all card-carrying cross bearers if we follow Christ. “Take up your cross and follow me,” the song commands. “I heard the Master say!” He speaks: Follow me by carrying your cross daily. Self-deny daily too. (Luke 9:23) Accept your suffering. There’s much you can’t fix. Do what you can. The rest, that which gives you pain, the injustices, the abuses, the neglect of godliness… The stuff you can do so very little about, accept. It’s there. Don’t reject it. Embrace it. Suffer with Christ for it as best you can!
Receive God’s present grace
Life is a holy gift. There are 10,000 graces encountering you through friends’ and family’s faces. Receive that grace. We live in the eternal realm knowing that grace surrounds us. We live in interactive relationship with God. He inhabits the present moment with us. Grace abounds now; and grace will abound for 10 millennia and more. It never runs out. The world is always awash in it.
Be thankful for present pleasures
The ice cream after dinner. The pie your friend surprised you with. A little nap, with Mozart in the background. Tickling a grandbaby. Completing a project you started weeks ago! You made it through Covid. All these present pleasures and more are rooted in eternal living.
Are you awake! You should be, for Christ plays in 10,000 places lovely of limbs and lovely in eyes not his…. But they are yours and mine! Hallelujah!