Disconnect

Jesus said, "Do not worry about tomorrow" (Matthew 6).  Tomorrow is our Church's anniversary day.

We are blessed by being disconnected from our future.  Joseph Parker lyricised it thus:

What if tomorrow’s cares were here

Without its rest!

I’d rather He unlocked the day;

And, as the hours swing open, say,

“My will is best.”

The very dimness of my sight

Makes me secure;

For, groping in my misty way,

I feel His hand; I hear Him say,

“My help is sure.”

To the unbeliever, the one certainty that the future holds for all human beings is decline and death.  This, Jesus has conquered!  For the believer decline and death are the two things that can be definitively ruled out.  Jesus has disconnected us.

We are blessed in as far as we can choose to be disconnected from our past.  Lots of stuff there we want to hold in memory but plenty else:  sudden deaths, failed tests, disrupted relationships, missed opportunities, wasted years - I could go on. One thing I do, letting go those things which are past, and stretching out to the things which are before, wrote Paul the apostle.

Jesus has detached the past from us, our sins forgiven, our defeats redeemed, our failings covered, our inner wounds healed.

But there is not a third disconnect - a disconnect from the present. We may wish there was. We may behave as though there is. But with the future unrevealed and the past put behind us the Present is the location of service, commitment, attachment. 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me'. Today is mine!  I must make it His.

"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, that I ought to do. And what I ought to do, by the grace of God, I shall do." (Edward Everett Hale).