Unwrap the Present

Another best sermon I’ve ever heard

“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

James 4:13-17

-the fact that you can remember your path adn imagine the future is part of God’s design
-we can remember backwards and reflect forwards
-the only place we can live in is the present, and it’s the most elusive
-we must have a proper relationship to the present; “you are a mist…”; do not live in the illusion that you are not going to die; “if it is the Lord’s will we will live”
-”Today is a good day to die.” [The Code of the Samuri]
-do not use the future to escape the present
-we don’t like the price have to pay to live life in the present
-people who change the world do so one square foot at a time, by living in the present, by serving and making a daily contribution to humanity
-in preparing for the future do not abdicate your responsibility to the present; make sure that the future doesn’t rob you of the present, which is the only reality in which you can live
-stop long enough to ask yourself, “am I living the life God created me to live?”
-if you are miserable on the course you are taking, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the course
-we know enough from God’s word to fill a lifetime; we already know the good we are to do; knowing too much paralyses us and makes us indecisive
-if you knew everything you think you need to know, you wouldn’t get out of bed; if you knew everything God knew, you would run for your life
-somewhere along the line we have to stop preparing for the future and start living in the present