Welcome to the conversation.
Here's a question for those of you who are drivers: How many of you drive your car whilst continually looking in the rearview mirror, or, by enjoying the view out of the side windows?
You wouldn't do it, would you, because you know you wouldn't last very long?
(Actually, my dad often drove along whilst looking out of the side windows - very scary - the car often moving in the same direction as he was looking.)
This is how so many churches "travel" along though, more on where they've come from or where they are, rather than where they are going.
I confess my love for driving; in 1990 I got the chance to take my advanced driving test. Part of the preparation for this involved giving a running commentary to an assessor who sat in to prepare me for my test. The purpose of the commentary was to let my assessor know just how much I was seeing, including how far into the distance (future) I was looking.
The commentary did include what I could see in my rearview mirror and my instruments too - you are disciplined to cycle through looking into the forward distance, the rearview mirror, and at the instruments - but most of the time was spent looking forward.
Advanced living, like advanced driving, is about looking into the future. It doesn't ignore the "rearview mirror" because it's important to know where we have come from, but it knows that to do this too often or for to long is to invite an accident. Just as the "future" of my car journey informs how I drive now, so the possible future tells me how I must live now.
What do you think?
2 comments:
Isn't this why I am doing my Pastoral Carers course just now for what is ahead? But we can only drive on one street at a time, or spend longer in a town if we have much to learn to be equipped for the journey and what we will meet on the road ahead. I trust where God is leading me, even though I amolder I cannot deny the enthusiasm and love he has given me to share with others.
Well said. What you are saying is, seeing what the future holds, you are ready to meet it. That's what makes the present - the only place we can live - more hopeful.
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