The wise person recognizes that one of the hand-holds of life is the practical model of projecting self as indicated in perceptions of past, present and future experience and choices. Choices must be made. In the kit of tools for life structuring, it is an effective factor when rightly used for purpose. As we would not use a hammer to saw a piece of wood, so we would not use this mind concept to do more than it is designed to accomplish when rightly played out. Its first value is personal, but it moves at some pace to the social life of the person impacting many or few in the society. I have just reviewed the experience of a man who was left as a newborn in a dumpster to die 25 years ago. Found by a policeman, rescued, he was made a member of a family. Doing well he has sought his birth parents, finding first his father, and about to meet his birth mother, unrelated to his father. His purpose is to tell them that he loves them, and that he has forgiven any wrong they have done relating to him. (This young man has a future marked with soul tranquility if he continues for the future the attitude that he adopted from his short past. I wish I knew what his adopted parents may have done to have guided him, or some other spiritual context to which he took courage to form his life context rather than be pushed about, without personal control, for destiny.)
We do well to have a life pattern that is not marked by Stop and Go, with Win or Lose, but with repeated reminding: I am not now the person I was, but I am not yet the person I want to be. Therein is captured the meaning of time to our lives – past, present and future. God is not affected by time periods. He is the forever present, which is eternal. However, we capture his work in us through such idioms as the Ancient of Days. Happily for us, he is willing to work with us in time periods, a factor of his own creation but distorted in the way mankind uses time. God means to use time to cultivate in his children a maturity (growth) from a lesser context to a higher context, and uses time (incremental) to accomplish the goal. When he does not use time in the human context, we have miracles. If we knew the workings of God’s direct acts we would understand miracles. Increments to accomplishment relate to nature. A fertile chicken egg requires twenty one days for the chick to crack the shell. A miracle is immediate: providences need time. God is in both. Because we are so tied to nature’s pattern, we wonder if miracle is possible. God offers his miracles to us in the evolutions of time experiences. So it is that we can put the chain of time together and find the rock to which we are anchored. Or we can go about in time, as one person cast it: with our spiritual umbilical cords in our hands looking for a place to plug in.
So it is that in nature we look back over our lives. We find things that we like and dislike, acts/thoughts we praise and condemn. Because personhood that is acceptable with God is one, the end of things must lose that which is negative and gain that which is affirmative. We can’t do that for ourselves so, if we choose, God helps us. If we accept his redemptive gift as spiritual reality we set out to gain the affirmatives. We can feel the experience in that: we are not what we were, we are not what we shall be, but we are on our way. We are not only better presently than we were in the past, but we are gratified to be where we are – on the road to eternal peace. The desire for the Christian is to be guided by the model of Jesus Christ. The disciples, except for Judas, discovered the secret, and that occurred incrementally as they walked with Jesus and took to heart what he had to say – and how he lived in their observation. What the true Christian cannot accomplish even in commitment and devotion, God makes up the difference with his accommodation in justification. The point is to be on the right road and use the map of time, past, present and future, to assure that this road leads to the Promised Land. What do I want to be? I want to be Christ-like, as John was in love, as Paul was in mind and service, as Mary and Joseph in humility, as Peter was in overcoming weakness, as Daniel and Joseph were in adapting to society, as Ruth and Esther were in projecting their futures, as Stephen was in forgiveness, as Moses was in friendship with God, as Luke was in seeking out the truth of gospel meaning. We are the children of the past, present and future. The road is righteousness reflecting the holiness of God. It takes some doing to achieve, but well worth the total life investment. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020