WHO HOLDS YOUR FUTURE?
We spent the last 4 weeks drawing lessons from a pencil. In our final analysis, we arrive at the question of who holds our future.
Who holds the pencil pretty much determines what comes out of it. Yet the difference between inanimate pencils and living humans is the agency or the free will we have to choose who controls our lives, and the way we live our lives as a result of that.
We know that what God has given all believers is the potential for an abundant life, His personal pruning for a fruitful and productive life, the forgiveness of sins, and His plans for our future. From biblical accounts of King David, we saw that God had singled out the young David from among his outwardly more eligible brothers and although he didn’t have a faultless heart (who has?), it was a heart that was true to God that trusted God’s correction, His process, and His silence. (If you’re not convinced, read the book of Job and the book of Psalms.)
God is always one step ahead of us. We have His word in Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.”
Even so, the questions of ‘who’ and ‘what’ we serve do not have easy or obvious answers, even to ourselves.
‘Who’ is a question of pivot and purpose. It is a question about God, ourselves, and others: who we primarily invest our lives in, whose interests we serve and protect, who we want to please.
‘What’ describes our plans, the values we hold, where we spend our time, how we respond and act, as well as our idea of success and happiness. It’s also about what occupies our minds and attention. However, on occasions when we feel anxious about the future, uncertain about now, or under great financial or familial pressure, it can seem as if life is all about ourselves.
Thus, it is worth paying attention to the nuances between the ‘who’ and ‘what’ that dominate our lives on a regular basis because Christian living can be hard to navigate whether we are living in a high-pressured fast lane or just cruising along with the different circumstances of life.
Notice that when God had His heart on the young David to lead Israel, he was out in the fields watching the sheep and goats (1 Samuel 16:11b). It was nothing that his family could boast about to a visiting prophet. But while people graded his eligibility by what he did - watching over sheep and goats – God was looking for a candidate who could fight off herd predators as well as he would defeat the Goliaths that he would later face as the king of Israel.
Henry J.M. Nouwen, a well-loved priest, professor, and author once wrote: As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will remain filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to putting people and things in their "right" place.
‘Who’ and ‘what’ are simple but probing questions that invite an honest evaluation of our lives centered around our relationship with Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.
We may be contented with the warmth of a closely-knit family or have impressive LinkedIn credentials that are highly sought after and think that such fortuity guarantees our future. We may live in homes (in more than one location) that provide us with everything we need and confuse privilege with purpose. Sometimes, we may even feel as though the exigencies of our daily life are the reasons for our existence.
It has been said that faith is not knowing what the future holds, but knowing who holds the future. A global pandemic has changed how people live and work around the world and forced us to focus on the most basic needs of survival and safety. Nevertheless, God can help us successfully ride the waves of change and rewrite our lives during this time.
Indeed, we live in extremely perilous and unpredictable times that demand courage to stand out from the crowd. Nothing can change the reality of God’s word for us, even in an environment of fear and panic. Psalm 16:5-6 [CSB] says: Lord, you are my portion and my cup of blessing; You hold my future. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.”
David slew the monstrous and heinous Goliath with a common slingshot that shepherd boys used and approached him ‘in the name of the Lord Almighty’ (1 Samuel 17:45). In the same way, Covid-19 is more than a temporary setback but an evolving global health pandemic that is pushing us back into the safety of our homes. Individually, we need to pay closer attention when God calls us to take counter-intuitive steps to make a difference even as people are living with limited freedom to come and go as they like. We need to resist all tendencies to retreat into safety and sit out the pandemic with our family, and instead, learn to advance God’s love through acts of human kindness and compassion.
More than ever in human existence, we need to ask ourselves the life-changing question: Who holds my future?
Is it scientists who work in labs to develop vaccines to save human lives? Is it software engineers who develop state-of-the-art technology for businesses, governments and individuals? Is it technocrats who predict the future of global finance and economy? Or is it just God?
Who holds your future?
