Living In The Now

Living in the Now

Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today. Matthew 6:34

“YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER ALREADY KNOWS all your needs” (Matthew 6:32). With those words, Jesus urged his listeners to lay down their worries about tomorrow and deal only with the issues at hand. After all, you do not have access to past or future moments. You only have the “now.” You can give thanks for the past and plan for the future, but there’s no point in worrying about either. You can live at peace right now in this moment and deal patiently with the things in front of you.

That’s a very simple concept and, for many of us, a very difficult practice. Fallen human nature moves our eyes from the simplicity of trusting God to the problems that need to be fixed or even to potential problems down the road. But worry is a form of fear, and fear is a distorted form of faith—a belief that something bad will happen. It’s a perversion of the forward-looking vision God has given us. It turns our focus on opportunities into a focus on possibilities for harm. It’s a negative image of faith.

For some people, though, worry is the only way they know how to prepare for the worst. It assumes that God isn’t going to be there when problems happen, which is why Jesus anchored his command not to worry in the assurance that our Father already knows what we need before we need it. He will be there. He will give enough grace—and protection and provision and power—when the time comes. You don’t need to lie awake thinking about it. It’s all in his hands.

Jesus lived with the understanding that God is in control and cares for us. Yes, bad things can and do happen. But worry doesn’t prevent that. Whatever happens, God heals, delivers, and restores us, working all things into our redemptive story. He is sovereign over our lives, and he will not allow us to be overcome, even when we are having to endure. We are invited, even commanded, to live in peace.

Worries just don’t matter. Things really are in a better hand than ours.