So do not worry, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

Matthew 6:31-34, NIV (1978)

 

Say not, "Why were the former days better than these?" for it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

Ecclesiastes 7:10, ESV

 

I think one of the most difficult things that people can learn to do is to live in the present. Life can be very challenging, so it is very tempting for us to look at the past thinking that things were so much simpler then. Furthermore, it can be difficult to not be thinking about tomorrow and wonder how we are going to manage. We've all heard those trite sayings like, "Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow never comes" but they really don't help much when it comes to the realities of life. The fact is that the past greatly influences who and what we are today, and the future has to be given some consideration if for no other reason than our bills are coming due tomorrow.

 

So, what is the secret? Why, when we live during the most advanced era of history, do we have so much anxiety? And why do we not seem to have the happiness that we were so confident we would have when we were younger?

 

I believe the answer to those questions is that we have forgotten what it was like to live in the present.

 

Now my grandchildren have no such problems. Give them an ice cream, and they are wildly content. They are not thinking of how yesterday's flavor was so much better, nor are they worried about how they might not have any ice cream at all tomorrow. Give them ice cream today, and they will be happy, happy, happy!

 

And it doesn't have to be something as wonderful as dessert either. The other day they spied an insect that looked just like a leaf. They looked at it with marvel and then squealed with delight when it flew over to a flower and blended into its new surroundings. They looked for it in wonder and were seemingly beside themselves with joy when they found it hidden amongst the leaves. Then they switched their attention to picking some grapes from a vine their great-grand parents had planted years before they were born, and they were filled with delight once again.

 

Have you ever noticed that little kids don't have too much trouble being happy? Have you ever wondered why? I believe it's because they live in the moment!  

 

Now, you might be quick to say that it's easy for them, to live in the present, because they don't have any "baggage" from past mistakes weighing them down, and they certainly don't have anxiety for the future because someone else is paying their bills. And of course, this is true enough, for children don't have much of a past to regret, and they don't have the responsibilities that we adults have concerning the future. But they also have one thing that many adults lack, and that is the ability to trust. 

 

When we are young, we trust in our parents - and for good reason! If you have good parents when you are a child, you just take it for granted that they will take care of your needs. And you don't even have to think about it too deeply, because they have always done so despite the fact that you have likely been oblivious to that fact. As we grow older, however, the reality of life comes into our focus, and along with that reality comes an understanding of our own ever-growing responsibilities. The odd thing is that the older we got in our parent's home, the more we couldn't wait to be old enough to take on these responsibilities ourselves.

 

Do you remember what it was like to "dream" about the future? We couldn't wait to get our own car, our own house, and our own lives! But along with these dreams came the bills to pay for them, as well as the jobs to earn the money to make those payments. As the responsibilities grew, it was often tempting to look back on our lives with a type of wistfulness for the days when someone else was taking care of us. Knowing that that wasn't likely to happen, we began to worry about what the future would bring. Would we ever get married and be happy? Would we have children and be happy? Would we be able to keep our health and our youthful appearance and be happy? Would we make enough money to pay our bills and be happy?

 

As we grow older, it is very natural to associate getting the things we want in the future with today's happiness, and we fail to enjoy today! We look at those things that once made us so happy as childish now, and we might even shake our heads in derision of such an immature state of living, but we would be foolish to do that. You see, the child's ability to live in the moment is a critical factor to their happiness and contentment. Have you ever noticed how completely focused upon the moment they are in when doing something as simple as coloring a picture or riding a bike? Their focus is squarely on the task at hand, and the thought of yesterday and tomorrow have little place in their world today. It is that ability to throw yourself into the present that keeps our minds off of the things in the future and past.

 

By doing so - by learning to live in the present - we can begin once again to enjoy the life that we so desire. And this enjoyment is not an escape from reality, either. We can enjoy things today without being blind to our responsibilities. We know that we have things that we must do and bills that we must pay in the future, but this should not keep us from living in the present, today! 

 

Perhaps a practical illustration will help us to see this point. When my wife and I were about thirty, we had two kids, a house, two cars, and a mountain of debt. I was self-employed as a real estate appraiser, and the real estate market hit a slump. We had a car payment, a mortgage, a second mortgage, and credit card bills. I had even borrowed money from my parents. Not only did the future look bleak, but we were suffering from some bad financial decisions we had made in the past. Our house was up for sale, but again we were seemingly crippled at every turn from the real estate slowdown. 

 

We were, to say the least, somewhat at our wit's end.

 

That's when I did what I should have been doing all along: I began to pray. It's not that we hadn't been praying all along. We prayed for more work, for more money, for more time. It seems that I had praying for everything but the one thing I should have been praying for all along - God's will to be done! So, I began praying that if God wanted us to keep the job we had, that I would be willing to do the work needed to help get us out of the hole we found ourselves in. But (and this was the key) if it was not God's will that we continue on that same career path, that we would have the wisdom to see that. Whatever He wanted was going to be what I wanted in the future, if He would just give us the wisdom we needed to see what that was.

 

In short, I began for the first time in a long time to place my trust in Him.

 

And. I was not let down. Jesus' instruction to seek first the kingdom of God turned out not to be just good religious advice, but outstanding practical advice for daily living. Things turned around very quickly after that, for I was no longer trusting in my own ability to handle any crisis that came up. And while I certainly do not want to imply that I had somehow "mastered" the art of trusting God, it was that initial step forward to begin trusting Him that made all the difference. It was that difference, I believe, that helped me to learn how better to live in the present, and, therefore, how to enjoy life once again.

 

If you have not been enjoying life today because you have been weighed down from past mistakes and anxious for what the future might hold, then welcome to the club - it's a big one! However, if you would like to do something to change all this, may I recommend that you begin living in the present instead of in the past or the future? You can start by taking the perfect advice that Jesus gave some 2,000 years ago. It will require a level of trust that you might not have been willing to place in God in the past. But, if we can all simply learn to trust in God and seek His kingdom first, we are guaranteed to have less anxiety in the future. Maybe then we can learn to fully savor the joys of living in the present! 

 

Perhaps that's why today is called "the present". It truly is a gift from God! All we have to do is unwrap that gift and begin to enjoy the life He has called us to live.