The Future Happens
During the recent election excitement in North America, every day brought new guesses as to what the future would hold. Many of the speculations proved to be incorrect, but here we are in the future anyway.
With all the economic turmoil in the world these days - and it really does seem to be global - it seems everyone has thoughts about what will happen. Personally, I'm becoming a little bored with all the self-serving prophecies that predict disaster for everyone if the sector from which the prophet derives his or her income doesn't immediately receive a large handout from the government. But handout or no, stimulous package or no, financial meltdown or no, a few will lose everything, a few will profit significantly, and most of us will muddle along somewhere in the middle.
Moving to the more philosophical, I just put down an article in which the author pointed out some differences between modernism and post-modernism. Some scoff that the philosophically-inclined don't have a name for where we are now and are forced to resort to using a term that simply indicates that we are not where we used to be. Yet regardless of whether you see yourself as a modern or a post-modern or something else entirely, your life today is unfolding mostly according to forces outside of yourself.
It would be nice if we had the option of standing back, observing reality and then choosing whether or not to participate. We don't. We find ourselves plunged into life, happily or unhappily, willingly or unwillingly. The future happens to us all. Some of that will be a shared future, some intensely personal.
Around this time of year, we think of the future in a different way, but the fact is, that each day we live is yesterday's "future" filled with all of its its unknowns which are today's reality. And whether or not we guessed correctly about it, we're in it. Most of us have made enough erroneous guesses about the future to be convinced that, for the most part, it will be a perpetual mystery.
The fearful can be paralyzed at such a prospect. They cling tenaciously to an interpretation of reality that gives them some little level of comfort, even though they admit that in most specific instances their attempts to predict outcomes have fallen far short of reality.
In Matthew 7:34, Jesus told his followers to "not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." We've all experienced that each day has its own troubles, but it's hard to be at peace knowing that. But Jesus wasn't spouting platitudes here. In the previous verse, he set the conditions under which we can be free from worry. It is when we put God's kingdom and his righteousness first in our lives, that we can face the future without fear.
We may perceive that we are on the brink of a new year. In fact, we are only on the brink of a new day. A new day in which we find ourselves full of fear or resting in faith. The future happens to us all. The only thing we can do is decide how we will respond to it as it is happening.
Ron Hughes
© December 2008
