Falling Water

Falling Water

Here and Now with a promised Future

I am thinking today of something my pastor said in a sermon. He compared our lives to the rushing water over a waterfall and a stream. If we catch the water in a fish bowl, that’s our present time.  He reminded us of the condition of our hearts. Jesus encourages us to look inside, at this moment, to see our attitudes and our concerns. We are, as in Pastor Bill’s analogy, in our fish bowl existence of now.

Others are in the fish bowl too. How we relate to each “fish” is the value of today. We can chose to fight for our food, hide ready to attack, or live in compliance with the rules and limitations of the bowl.

“Don’t worry about tomorrow,” Jesus said, “for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Pastor Bill points out that much of what Jesus has to say about living in the present concerns our attitudes and actions toward other people.  “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”; “do to others what you would have them do to you”; “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged,” and many other commands like those.

We will show others the Kingdom of God by the attitude of our hearts and how we treat each other. But it doesn’t end there (or here). Jesus talks about eternity. Bill put it like this; Just as Jesus talked about living in the present, He also talked about living in the future eternity.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

“All the nations will be gathered before me (God), and I (He) will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,”

To me, one of the most important facts that Pastor Bill claims, is not our fear of the end times, “but because the life, death, and crucifixion (and resurrection) of Jesus Christ was the most defining event of history since God’s act of creation.”  

As Christians, we do not fear an approaching apocalypse and fire, but a joyful anticipation of meeting Jesus in a new way, free from every distraction. So now we can live in peace, even in our troubled world. There is a promise, a hope, and a future.

                                                            God Bless Your Day