We're all still trying to comprehend that it's April. We've repeated "30 days hath September..." and surely there was a day lost here or there; surely, we must've been over zealous in the changing of the clocks and turning of the calendar.
Somebody accidentally ripped April clean off the calendar when they removed March, and it reads May now. It's not good, how time flies and two months go in the garbage.
My youngest has been telling me weekly what he wants for his birthday dinner - which is in October, which is months away, which makes me itchy. I don't want to think about October and my baby turning double digits. I also don't want another child so eager to be older and so bent on the future.
What happens now, today, in this hour before the sunrise and the daybreak - can we take the time to think about this time?
The meditations of my heart are often like my son. The future needs planned, the meals laid out, the cupboards stocked and the floors mopped and all the boxes of the calendar, filled.
No, he's not thinking those things - but his longing for his birthday, making sure I don't forget anything, and getting all his requests in for the cake and the dinner and the gifts - his nature and mine are so alike.
Our nature pushes us forward to what-ifs and what-fors. The little boy who longs for control, longs for his Special Day when he is center, longs for another year on his calendar and another rung on the ladder of command; he's really planning against all the heartbreak and taking of orders that a youngest child feels. He's waiting for a special day when he is the big boy who controls what he can't control.
But the future is uncontrolled presence.
We write in the boxes but a whole month can go in the garbage with all its plans unfulfilled, so what's the point?
The future is uncontrolled presence and we are trying, always, to control the present until it leads us there - to the future we've planned and with the will we carry like insurance. We plan against the need for obedience or surprise or unpreparedness.
If we make all our own plans then we obey all our own wills.
We think that making plans will bring safety and control, but the future is beyond our control and His presence in it is our only guarantee.
This present, this gift in today and all the unexpected and unplanned things that will break and spill and bless you...how about if we each live that.
If I determine to live in the present, without control, maybe I can invite more of His presence. Maybe my future can rest secure in what I can't ever control anyways.
His uncontrolled presence is insurance and assurance enough.
*****
I saw April in the garbage can. Her boxes didn't intimidate me and there was no temptation to retrieve her, staple her back in place. I can let time fly and welcome the Presence; because a lot of important things will happen in April but none of them are beyond His control.
*****
Do you have a command from the Lord?
Hasn't He given you instructions?
Be strong and of good courage, then.
Where can you ever possibly go, and not be with Him?
What could the future possibly hold that He doesn't?
Keep His words then.
Keep them in your heart till they flow as abundance - out and over and under every question.
The future is Uncontrolled Presence and you will not contain it, control it, or outplan it.
But He is it.
Alpha and Omega.
{Joshua 1:8-9 || Psalm 139:7 || Matthew 12:34 || Revelation 1:8}
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