Newsletter Article

Planning for the future is to be lauded. If you aim for nothing, you achieve it. Or as someone else put it: Failure to plan is knowingly planning to fail.

Looking back is fine when thinking of what God has done and bringing it to remembrance. However, there is not a lot of value in reminiscing. Remember Lot’s wife!

Being in the present, carpe diem, an overused Latin aphorism for living in the moment or “seize the day” is right unless it is meant to allow you to be hedonistic in the here and now, which is what most people mean by the phrase. Jesus Himself said: “sufficient for the day is the trouble thereof” and we should not worry for tomorrow; so, yes, be in the here and now.

Three options placed before us and surely is reminiscent of a New Year’s Eve sermon.

But this is not that.

The past is gone and cannot be got back. The present then matters for the choices we make today effect the future. Redeem the time, Paul says in Ephesians. Buy time.

How?

What would you say the goal of life is? The past has brought us to this present time. This present time will bring us to the future. What did you aim at to get here? And what are you aiming at to get to where you are going?

There was a man, I’m sure you know, that had a bumper year and thought to build bigger and better barns and storage, and thought, yep, I’ve got all I need to retire. But…and you knew it was coming along...he died that night. And something was said along the lines that he was not also rich toward God. (Luke 12:13-21)

Nebuchadnezzar was such a man related by himself in Daniel 4. He was at ease and flourishing. Until, that is, it all went horribly wrong.

Is our vision of the future to be at ease and flourishing, with enough for retirement? Well, so we plan. And I don’t think there is a problem with planning. But is this our chief goal? Is it all self-serving? Building one’s own kingdom rather than about God’s? Where is the trust and reliance on God if it is all about our plan, our achievements, our self-attainment?

To redeem the time is to put God first. Our chief goal is not for self-satisfaction but knowing God. Our chief aim is to glorify God. Our chief aim is to seek first His Kingdom, His righteousness, His Way. And He will provide you all you need. It should not be so much carpe diem as carpe Deum, not so much as “seize the day” as “seize God”:

Matthew 6:33 ESV

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.