students of jesus

Jesus said some pretty outrageous things; sometimes you just have to wonder if he was serious. Maybe when we see him face-to-face he might say, “Oh, the Sermon the Mount? I was just yanking your chain.” Or not. Perhaps he meant what he said.

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:34)

These words are a crazy combination of challenge and promise. The promise is perhaps a negative: each day comes with just enough trouble. It’s not the sort of promise you’ll find in a book of Bible promises or some promise-a-day software. The challenge is that Jesus suggests tomorrow isn’t worth the worry. Really? How, then, can I prepare?

These words from Jesus are an invitation to exercise the discipline of the present moment.

Each of us lives one day at a time. Rich or poor, young or old, we all experience time in a sequence of days. We cannot jump ahead by a day or a year. We cannot recreate the past, as in the movie “Groundhog Day” where Bill Murray, a self-centered fool, is given the opportunity to live the same day over (and over and over) until he gets it right. No: the days march by in line, one after another.

Who came up with such an arrangement? Well, God did. Although he lives outside of time, he set the cosmos in motion, and in so doing, set us into a world of time. “So what?” we are tempted to think--until we consider that God looked upon all of his creation and said, "It’s good. It’s very good.” The goodness of creation reveals that the daily march of our lives, the day-upon-day progression of life, was set up by a wise and loving Father. He created time for our good. He created the daily, but we have added the grind.

Still, many of us feel trapped in the present moment. Our past has hemmed us in: we think our foolish choices have brought us this far and the present moment feels like prison. Others look forward from this present day and conclude the path of our lives is already set. Forces are in motion, we think. The future has been determined by past events.  We begin to think our own lives are beyond control.

We’re not alone in these thoughts. Some of the greatest men of faith had remarkably bad days. Days in which they felt captured by the past or faced an uncertain future. Moses must have been having a really bad day when he began to pray the prayer in Psalm 90. Moses observed that God lives forever, and we are lucky to hit eighty years. Everything dies. “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12) Moses must’ve been a real buzz kill at parties.

Then the Spirit of God hinted at what Jesus would teach years later: “Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.” (Psalm 90:14) Moses began to get the message. The final verses of this Psalm/prayer begin to look up. God’s mercies are not yesterday’s mercies, nor are they a pipe dream for tomorrow. They're here now. In the present moment. There are new mercies for each new morning.

I like to imagine Jesus reciting Psalm 90 while he walked in the Galilean countryside. I can see him watching plants putting forth flowers, birds finding food, feeling the breeze on his cheek. Jesus smiled: perhaps he wondered what Moses was getting so worked up about. Jesus launched a message about today. Today, he said, the Kingdom of Heaven is breaking in. Maybe it didn’t yesterday, who knows what will happen tomorrow, but the Spirit is bringing the righteousness, joy and peace of the Kingdom right now to those who hear and rejoice.

His words are a call to practice the discipline of the present moment. Jesus is not against the past: he encourages us to remember the past, but only so we can have confidence that God is with us today. What he did for others in the past he will do for us. He’s not against the future. Dave Ramsey can relax: I’m sure Jesus had a 401K-retirement account. But he wasn’t invested in the future; his investment was all in the now. It’s common sense to learn from the past; it’s dangerous to live there. It’s prudent to plan for the future; it will drive you crazy to try to control it.

So we’re left with the wisest, most radical, sanest advice ever given:

“Seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”