Many are familiar with the app “Google Maps”. The program will route a trip from your location to a specific destination by entering the address and touching the “directions” button. Like magic, a map appears showing the quickest route. Just tap “start” and off you go. What you can see at this point is where you are and just a fraction of the next few miles. However, you can look ahead at your journey by manipulating the screen. Maybe you want to see where the traffic gets tied up. Or you want to know your options for eating or resting. How many miles before the next hot cup of java?
No sooner have you started to explore what is ahead, when you are prodded with a pop-up to “re-center”. A light tap on that button returns you to the blue arrow; the arrow that the shows the reality of where you are on your trip at that precise moment.
We need a “re-center” button for our life journey. As we travel through our days, we often start looking ahead, trying to see what the next portion of the trip brings. What turns are coming? What obstacles will I face? How far to the next destination. What terrain will I travel through?
What proves helpful in a physical journey, can be detrimental on our life journey. Often that look ahead is motivated by fear, or morphs into anxiety as our mind wanders in the foggy future. (Matthew 6:34) Obsessive daydreaming sparks unhealthy, unrealistic longing. (Philippians 4:8) Focusing on the future removes us from the present.
At those times, we need that “re-center” button. We need to get our focus off of what may lie ahead, or doesn’t lie ahead, and direct our wayward thoughts back on Jesus.
Where do we find Him? In the very moment we are living. In the now is the only place to experience Jesus. We are assured He will be in our future, guiding and directing; helping us to navigate the very road He has laid out for us. But we can only be with Him in our present.
“Here”, He waits for us. And “now” is where we find and experience Him.
This is how Jesus lived. Always available to His Father and tuned in to situations and others around Him. We model Jesus by living each moment and being fully present to God.
Re-centering requires discipline. It doesn’t come naturally, our thoughts prone to wander, flitting about like moths. (2 Corinthians 10:5) Being focused on His presence in the present requires attention and intention.
Staying in the moment is most difficult when we are stepping into, or enduring the journey through, a hard. We want this to be over. We search for a way out. Standing on our tiptoes, we strain to see the shore that will give us safety from this never-ending-beating of a storm. To where the pain stops, the torment ceases, hearts begin to heal.
But, in the hard, we find treasures discovered nowhere else: tangibly experiencing God’s presence; uncovering wonderful truths missed on any other path; baring our hurting souls to Him and knowing, deeper still, His gentle, forgiving, healing grace; encountering His peace that passes all understanding.
In the vulnerability that comes when our false securities are swept aside, we are the most teachable. The most sensitive to His whisperings. The most alert to His presence. The most pliable in His hands as He molds us to His likeness.
Through the hard, being in the “here and now”, experiencing His Presence, is the best place to be.
“This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
Psalm 118:24
