Jesus would have been a trail runner…
I’m pretty much convinced I’m right on this one (as usual). So here is what my mental blender frapped together the other day as I was running on some of the local trails in the snow (did I mention it was cold?). I was running a particularly windy section of trail with lots of roots and tricky footing. I starting thinking about what a different experience it is to run trails than to road run- especially long distances. When you run on the road, it is by and large the same repetitive motion, over and over again and the mind spends a lot of time wandering. I’ve run a few road races in my time and I find that the vast majority of the time most of my thinking dwells on the finish line and being done with this race.
On the trail it is very different. You have to keep very focused on the present and where your next step is going to land. You have to zig to the left and zag to the right, jump this log and bob and weave around that bush or tree. It is constantly varied and requires to be in the moment. You think about the future, your final destination, the routes you take, etc. but that is only part of your focus and it is used to guide your present running. Hmmmm…that sounds strangely familiar….
On a seemingly unrelated note, I just introduced my son to Star Wars a couple of weeks ago (bad theology but cool special effects). It was a great father/son time of bonding. At one point, Yoda is training Luke in the ways of a Jedi and he busts out with this great quote: “I cannot teach this boy. Always to the future he looks, never his mind on where he’s at!” (Don’t forget to say it in a high pitched Grover voice). Yoda has a glimpse at the same truth I started experiencing on the trail.
And then I was re-reading The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis- quick shout out to Pastor David’s favorite quotable book!). Uncle Screwtape is giving advice to Wormwood on how to cripple his patient’s effective living with God by forcing him to dwell on the future. Here’s a few notable quotes:
“The human lives in time but our Enemy (God) destines them for eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity…Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present…It is far better to make them live in the Future…it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the least like eternity…To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the future too- just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow…His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him.”
And to round it out, how did Jesus think of and speak to the Present vs. the future? “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear…So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows 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. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matt. 8: 25-34, exerpts).
So if Yoda, Lewis and Jesus (who carries a little more weight than the others) seem to be driving at similar things, what do I do with the idea of living in the Present, seeing that our Present is our touch point with Eternity (that reality in which God lives)? What does that mean for us at Christmas time especially?
