lion rebel

I remember it first from about the 3rd grade on, but I know it existed long before that. I see it nearly every day in both of my daughters. I can see it in older family members and I see it in friends my current age. In the 3rd grade I couldn’t wait to be in the 4th grade. 4th graders were way cooler than me, they got to play recorders! By the time 4th grade came around, I was ready for the 5th grade – they had the coolest teacher. By the time I had that coolest teacher, 6th grade was where it was at, and everyone knows why, because 6th graders rule the roost of Elementary school. And it progressively got worse, each year yearning for something the next age had. With that longing also came this idea about what it must be like to be that next age. And from day one I always imagined that Seniors were the coolest cats and that they had it all figured out.

Sooner or later I became a senior, and let me put it this way, I still don’t have it all figured out – on the outside I may have pretended to know what was happening, but truthfully I still felt like a 3rd grader. All of the joys that I imagined would come with the next age were not nearly as satisfactory as I imagined them to be, with two exceptions: marriage and kids – and even those beautiful things have come with struggle and frustration.

Yesterday, I finished my writing by mentioning how Peter hopes that we would all experience the good things God has to offer. He continues in the first chapter of his letter by saying, “What a God we have! and how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven – and the future starts now!”

We basically have three opportunities – to live in the now and for the future, or to live for the future and abandon everything of now, or to live for the now and not maintain our sight on the future. Peter goes on to say, “God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all – life healed and whole. I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine.”

At the end of the day, if we choose to live in the future now realm, we’re proving our trust in God and our faith in his plan and heart for us. On the other side, if we live for the future only, we’re abandoning any hope of God’s work in us, drawing us closer to him. And finally, if we live only in the now and not for the future, we’re placing our trust whole-heartedly in ourselves to pull us through the demons we face every day. As Peter says when he wraps this section up, “When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.”

I have exerted a lot of energy in living only in the now or only in the future – but both ventures have only proved my inability to be God. It is only in living in the future now realm that we experience God at his greatest peak – instilling his Spirit in us, helping us prove our faith genuine in every current moment as we move toward that time where all saints will join together in his presence.