Stewardship of the Moment

These were the words that came to me while on a Poustinia (a retreat in the desert of silence) a number of years ago.

Now is the hour of salvation, not yesterday or the day before that, and certainly not one day when I will be…or when I’ve finally…now. What does now really mean?

The fact that we have a now confirms the fact that the Lord has not forgotten us, and that in fact we are in His mind and more importantly, in His Heart. Every now that we experience is a result of the Lord pouring out His love to us. C.S. Lewis has written about how important the present truly is. He reminds us that it is the only time that we can make a choice to follow the Lord; that it is the one point in our lives that the Lord and man can truly meet and touch.

Regretting the past or worrying about the future are both practices in futility. Jesus reminds us that a single day’s worries are enough to consider and reminds us that worrying cannot accomplish any result in the future. How difficult it is to make this a reality in one’s life. How often do we attempt the impossible and try to change the past or live in the future? To the Lord, every moment is the eternal now, to us humans, this present second is given, and we have to realize it for the gift it is. We must stop trying to be God. Someone has already tried that and it didn’t work out too well for him.

Ironically, this has become one to the Old Boy’s most effective weapons against us. This ‘Angel of Light’ whispers stories in our ears of how in the future we can love the Lord better, or inspires in us holy zeal to perform amazing works and incredible love. Wanting to serve the Lord we plan and think feverously about this future. The Evil One has whispered what amounts to ‘sweet nothings’ in our ears and has seduced us into trading the one gift that could have made all those dreams a reality, he took from us the present in which we had the choice to act in a holy way. In this fashion, the road to hell truly is paved with good intentions.

When teaching a child to read, one does not put a book (even a good book) down in front of him/her and tell them to read it from front to back. Each word becomes a struggle, each sentence a challenge within itself. The meaning of the book is acquired through that struggle, and would not be won without the interpretation of all those words in and of themselves. We must learn to live word to word and bite to bite lest we choke.

It is permitted to us to hope in the future, but not to live in the future. When hoping, trust is put in Him who is worthy of all trust, whereas living the future is ultimately a lie that wastes the present.

When the Master comes back we must not be the servant who, being afraid of the gift, buried his present in the past. Nor can we be the servant who let his present run through his fingers as he dreamed of the future. We must be the servant who accepts this wonderful gift second by second, realizing what a blessing these seconds truly are, and returning them to God, as they are His to begin with, and we are only stewards of His amazing gifts.