Owning Our Future

As a person grows there are certain landmarks of maturity we recognize as important: learning to walk, to talk, to read, to ride a bicycle, to drive a car. There is graduation from High School, voting, getting married, becoming a parent, and piloting your own children through learning to walk, talk, read, ride a bicycle, drive a car. Recently I passed three landmark moments that signal my passage from youth to old age, from vigor to decay. They are:

*having the Hair Cuttery girl tell me she wasn’t finished with me yet, because she had yet to do “inside (my) ears.”

*having a girl from my first youth group become a grandmother (this has happened twice).

*having my mother say to me: “Here, try this, see if it works,” and then receiving from her hand a tube of age-spot vanishing cream.

That would be the fogey hat trick, I think. Soon I will be taking as many meals as possible at the Old Country Buffet, spending more and more time with the Weather Channel, and taking that extra spin around the parking lot so that I don’t miss “The rest of the story…”

“Your only as old as you feel,” the old cliché goes. If that is the case my knees are 85, my colon is 70, and my mind is 17. This might seem incongruous (“pathetic” might be another adjective of choice), but it is the way of things. The Bible says so. The physical part of us is temporary and decaying, but the sentient part of us is eternal, ageless (Ecclesiastes 12.1ff, II Corinthians 5.1ffm, I John 2.15-17).

Human life, even long-lived, is brief, just a vapor (James 4.14). This gives each moment value and urgency – because they are few and dwindling.

Marcus Aurelius wrote: Even if you are going to live 3000 more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you are living now, or live another than the one you are losing…. the present is the same for everyone, and it should be clear that a brief instant is what is lost. For you can’t lose the past or the future – how can you lose what you don’t possess? (Meditations 2.14) He was the last great (and perhaps the greatest) emperor of Rome (serving from A.D.161-180). He spent the final years of his life in the field, defending Rome’s northeastern frontier. In the evenings he kept a diary of sorts – ethical notes to himself, and these are what we know as his “Meditations.” Most of his themes fit well with our New Testament sensibility. One of the major themes is the brevity of life, and the urgency of the moment. At some point you have to recognize what world it is you belong to, what Power rules it, from what Source you spring; that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and never return (2.4).

I think we could all “amen” that last quote. I think it would be a good way to start an invitation at the end of a sermon, but there is something in that first quote with which I must disagree – that part about “not possessing” our future. This simply is not true. We do own our future – at least the lion’s share of it that will be spent somewhere other than here on earth. We determine what it will be. We choose.

Consider the great love the Father has given us that we should be called “children of God,” and that is who we are…Beloved, we are God’s children now, what we will be isn’t clear yet but we know this – when Christ appears we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (I John 3.1-3, see also II Timothy 4.6-8, and I Thessalonians 4.13-5.11)

It is appropriate, natural that our knees feel ancient while our in our minds we feel as young as ever. Our knees are not eternal. Our minds are.

And we determine our future. God has made it so.