The hours before mealtime are spent all over the place, pondering things that I have done, second-guessing myself and wondering if I could have done them better, and remonstrating myself for not having done the job right the first time.
Or I spent my time in the future. Can I make this trip, take care of this project, work on this goal, and fix that problem? If i screw it up,how many people will die?
Sometimes I feel like I live on the Enterprise on a mission where they have to slingshot around the sun perpetually around the sun. Everything is so focused on saving the past to rescue the future, there's no time for now.
But then I start to cook. There's an oven to preheat, ad food to prep. In a few minutes the oven is driving out the chill of the kitchen, and soon after that the air is filled with the sizzle of the pan and the slow simmer of chicken. There's a heady aroma that fills the senses, and gradually time narrows and comes into focus.
There's no future, there's just now. Later on there'll be time to worry about writing projects, reading assignments and important tasks. Right now, there's a pot that's starting to boil over, and I need to turn the burner down.
There's no past either, there's just now. In a few hours I can ponder the lessons there are to learn from the mistakes I made today, yesterday, last week and over the past 48 years, but right now there's a chicken baking under a rosemary seasoning that I need to baste, and there's a vegetarian alternative I need to find. I can't change the past, but I can keep the chicken from drying out.
This must be why God meets his people in the desert so much. In the cities you can worry what the queen will do if she finds you, and in the Promised Land you can dream about how you'll leverage your abundance to get the advantage over your neighbors. Not in the desert.
In the desert, we're free to plan the future and to learn from the past, but we don't have time to live there. In the desert we need enough water for today, and enough food. Right now is the present, and the present is all we need.
Copyright © 2019 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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