Carpe Momentum

Ready are you? What know you of ready?

For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind.

This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was … what he was doing!

Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things.

You are reckless.
Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

After seeing a vision of his friends in danger, Luke Skywalker became frustrated at the speed of his progress of becoming a Jedi under Yoda’s training. Han, Leah, and the remnant rebellion needed his help now. But his present task was to continue training so that he would present a formidable challenge to Darth Vader and the Dark Side. Feeling pressed for time, Luke explains to Yoda that he feels ready. Frustrated with Luke’s impatience, Yoda solemnly delivers the quote above.

It’s been 43 years since the release of The Empire Strikes Back, but the wisdom of that little, green, long-eared puppet still haunts me.

Luke and I share an unhealthy preoccupation with the future. My wife will tell you that my figuring out what I was “going to do with my life” was an obsession that spanned decades. Back in high school I would drone on with her as I worked through all the permutations of where I could end up in life. Like Luke, I craved adventure and excitement. When she got tired of listening, she would poke me in the chest with her finger adding (with her best Yoda impersonation), “Never his mind on where he was. Hmm. What he was doing. Hmph…”

I remember hearing a statistic that the average person spends something like 80% of their thought life thinking about their past or their future. For many, their pasts are burdened by regret. Their futures are a source of constant worry. Our daily routines are occupied with our “to do” list. We can’t even enjoy crossing something off the list before we’re thinking about the next thing.

If this statistic is true, we spend very little time focused on the present moment.

But I think this precisely where the Lord wants us to focus.

Dwelling on the Past

So, is thinking about our past a bad thing? Well, it depends. Take this verse for example…

Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
Isaiah 43:18-19 (ESV)

Here, Isaiah the prophet is telling Israel not to dwell on their past mistakes, failures, and indiscretions.

Why?

Because, God is on the move. He’s going to do something never seen before that will wipe all those concerns away–something they would feel in their bones. Of course, Isaiah was referring to the coming Messiah and the new Kingdom He would inaugurate. While this verse was a message for Israel, it was ultimately revealed to those who would follow Him.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)

Key to this verse is what Paul means by “the old”. Of course, the effects of the past haven’t been erased. But everything leading up to our re-creation in Christ has been thrown into the fire and turned to ash. While we may still suffer the effects of our past, we’re no longer defined by them.

We’re to avoid dwelling on our failures, mistakes, and regrets. But there are certainly things that are worth drawing on from our past.

First, if we can put a positive spin on our mistakes. By learning from our mistakes (and careful observation of others’ mistakes) is one way we gain wisdom. It’s also encouraging to look back and see how God was faithful to provide and to cause us to spiritually mature under a period of adversity.

Even so, the past is not where our thoughts should dwell.

Dwelling on the Future

What about the future? Is obsessing about our future a bad thing?

Again, it depends…

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Matthew 6:31-34 (ESV)

Jesus spoke these words to a large group of Jews. They needed to be reminded that, while they have largely forgotten God, God has not forgotten them. He was reminding them that they were still set apart from the Gentiles and not to worry about the kinds of things Gentiles worry about. Instead, their main job was to be preoccupied with seeking out the coming Kingdom. God would take care of the rest.

Their focus needed to be on the here and now.

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.”
James 4:13-15 (ESV)

This passage was addressed to Christian merchants who were seeking wealth by expanding their trade. One problem was that they were not considering God’s will in their mental calculus. James is warning these merchants not to commit to long-term plans. Instead, they should hold their dreams and ambitions in abeyance.

Why?

Because they were no longer their own. Being set apart by the Lord Himself, they would be “on call” to engage the world as ambassadors of Christ. Rather than taking a selfish view of their future, they were to defer to Christ’s lead on the where’s, when’s, and how’s of their engagement.

This doesn’t mean that thinking about the future is bad. Verses such as Psalm 90:12 and Luke 14:28 suggest that the Lord sees value in things like planning and considering our futures. In fact, Paul tells us that we gain tremendous encouragement by meditating on our future hope.

Even so, we shouldn’t dwell on the details of our future.

Sometimes we’re not thinking about the past or the future. Often, we’re just lost in thought. Again, this isn’t necessarily bad. Often it’s productive and necessary to focus on a problem to find the solution. Creativity and rest require we loosen the mind and allow it to wonder a bit. But some of us can be workaholics who spend overtime thinking about our jobs at work. If we’re not careful, our mental wandering can become an unhealthy distraction. Such thoughts may need intentional re-direction before they morph into something worse like worry, escapism, reliving past hurts, coddling false beliefs, or acquiescing to temptation.

For me, to be oblivious and distant for too long is to wonder into dangerous territory. For me, an idle mind is the devil’s work. For me, I have to intentionally and continuously re-center my mind on the Lord throughout the day.

Seizing the Moment

The past is where we find wisdom.

The future is where we anticipate our hope.

We can’t change the past.

We can’t immediately affect what happens tomorrow.

It’s only in the instantaneous present where we can engage the Lord and the world around us.

In the movie Dead Poet’s Society, Professor John Keating encouraged his students to “make their lives extraordinary”. The movie re-popularized the phrase carpe diem, which was Latin for “seize the day”. In the School of Christ, our Master whispers carpe momentum–calling us to fully engage the present by seizing each moment.

To seize the moment is to have an acute awareness of our physical and spiritual surroundings as the Lord illuminates us to His activity. It also means we walk in awareness of our inheritance and identity–as rightful members of the Trinitarian Community, as heirs to the Kingdom, as harbingers of the coming wrath, and ambassadors of the good news that Christ now reigns supreme.

In the post Awareness of the Unseen, we discussed the critical importance of being continuously aware of the Lord who is in us and around us. In the post Drinking from the Source, we discussed the spiritual instincts that we learn to follow His subtle direction. Seizing each moment by being continuously aware of both the Lord and our present circumstances. it allows us to take action as we’re led.

It’s easy to mentally wander. It’s also easy to be so engrossed in our work-related challenges that we never come up for air. As I’ve said before, seizing the moment takes effort—a gentle pressure of our will against ingrained mental habits. It also takes practice. But it’s one of the loftiest disciplines than any follower of Christ can practice.

The Voice of Procrastination

This brings us to the problem of procrastination. In my experience, there are two kinds.

The first kind is what I call long-term procrastination. This is when you know there’s something on your to-do list, but you keep pushing it off over days, weeks, or even months. For me, this is stuff like rotating the car tires or dusting off the chachkies on the bookshelf. They need to get done, but if I don’t get to them, they’ll still be there later.

But there’s another kind that I call instantaneous procrastination. This is when I’m confronted with something that can only be done at that moment. But rather than doing the thing that needs to be done, I immediately convince myself that there will be another opportunity later. But most often, no such unique opportunity will ever present itself again.

In my experience, most of what the Lord has asked of me has required immediate obedience. In those cases, my instantaneous procrastination was disobedience. But He’s also never given me several things to do at once. The Lord created us and knows that most of us are terrible at multi-tasking. He’s been gracious to enlighten me on the one important thing that needs to be done in a moment’s notice and nothing more.

Here are some examples of the kinds of things that the Lord has asked me to do in the moment:

Pray for a specific person or situation (invoke My power in their situation)
Ask that person over there how they’re doing (they need to hear My words through you)
Talk to your son/daughter about this issue (I know something you’re not aware of about them)
Kiss your wife and tell her that you love her (you’re neglecting your most precious gift on earth)
Call your mother/father (they miss your voice)
Help that person struggling over there (they need My help)
Apologize for what you did (your behavior did not reflect My nature)
Spend time with Me (I love to spend every moment with you; I miss our talks)
Give them a hug and tell them that you love them (they need to be reminded of how much We both love them)

Note that none of these things were particularly demanding. Some of them may have derailed my plans or required me to disengage from a task I was focused on (which can be frustrating to the flesh). Some of them require that I swallow some pride (and die a little to myself).

I’ve not yet been asked to do something big and life-changing like becoming a missionary to Asia or to sell all my possessions. (At least not yet anyway.) But obedience in the smaller things may serve to prepare us for bigger things to come.

Checking Azimuth

Land navigation was an indispensable part of my basic military training. But rather than using GPS, we were only given a map and a compass. To get to a waypoint, we would first use the map to reference the heading we should travel. Then we would use the compass to “shoot an azimuth” in the direction of that heading by holding the compass to our eye and aligning it with a prominent land feature (like a large tree or a mountain). We could then put our compass away. We knew if we kept walking toward the land feature, we would be heading in the right direction.

The problem was that the ground rarely allowed you to walk in a straight line. We would have to go around ponds, trees, or between small hills. Basic geometry tells you that if you wander too far from your original course, you would no longer be walking toward your waypoint by walking toward the land feature. To avoid this problem, we would have to frequently shoot new azimuths from our assumed location on the map.

I think this is how it is to remain aware and spiritually focused throughout the day. No matter how committed we are to remain centered on Christ, life has a way of sending us off in odd directions. We need frequent “azimuth checks” throughout the day to ensure we’re following the Lord. We do this by frequently and intentionally stopping for a second to re-center and re-focus our consciousness on the Spirit who is always present with us.

When we do, we can adjust course and press confidently toward our Waypoint.

Image Credit: Valentin Antonucci on Pexels.com