Where Are You Living?

We hadn’t been in Cherry Grove for very long - perhaps not much longer than a month even - when one afternoon a sweet, older gentleman from the church stopped by with some fresh-picked grapes for us. He wanted us to have them, he said, because he didn’t want them to go to waste and he couldn’t get his wife to do anything with them. It was a nice gesture, and we would have been perfectly delighted with the gift, except for one problem - and that was that his wife had died several months earlier, and he no longer realized that. He was in the “not so early” stages of dementia (Alzheimer’s I suppose) and like some of the folks I’ll see in the nursing home, he had already begun his retreat into the past, talking about family members who were long gone, and farm chores he hadn’t done for decades.

But you don’t have to have Alzheimer’s Disease to live in the past - truth is there are a lot us who are so nostalgic for days gone by that we just seem to obsess over them. It’s sort of like the two older men you might find in a small-town restaurant, with one of them sharing a tale from their youth. When the stories finished there’ll be a pause, and then one of them will say “Those were the good ol’ days,” and the other will reply, “Yep. Sure were!” It doesn’t matter that at the time those “good old days” might not have seemed all that good, we remember them as if they were. We do that sometimes - live in the past at the expense of the present!

But other folks tend to live in the future. I used to do this every spring as school would be winding to a close. On a beautiful spring day - especially in the afternoon after lunch - I would sit and stare out the window dreaming about the baseball games that we would soon be playing in the field behind my house, or of summer afternoons we’d spend at the pool, or of our annual trip to the lake in Michigan. Likewise someone working out of a windowless cubicle in the middle of January might get lost dreaming of an upcoming trip to some tropical area, and folks whose retirement is fast approaching may find themselves fantasizing about afternoons on the golf course, puttering around a workshop, or traveling the world! We do that sometimes - live in the future at the expense of the present!

There are even certain personality types that are known to do this! If you‘ve ever taken the Meyers/Briggs or Keirsey Temperament Sorter you might be aware that these inventories place people into four major personality types. One group, called Guardians, tend to live in the past (they prefer yesterday) and be terribly pessimistic about the future. A second group are known as Idealists, and these folks tend to live for tomorrow. For them the next move, the next job, the next pull of the handle on a “one armed bandit” will always be the one that makes it for them, and they’re excited about what lies ahead.

But horses aren’t like that - they always live in the present, in the here and now!

It’s not that they don’t remember - they remember perfectly well. If they didn‘t we wouldn‘t be able to train them, or we‘d have to re-train them every time we wanted to use them. They remember perfectly well, and will respond to what they‘ve learned and experienced in the past. Several years ago my oldest son and I were taking off on a ride, and the dogs where we were boarding were accompanying us. We didn‘t generally mind that because we figured that it‘s good to expose the horses to the dogs darting in and out of the brush, but on this day one of the dogs decided to enter a culvert on one side of the driveway and dart out just as the horse my son was riding was alongside the other end. The horse must have thought he was going to be eaten alive. He surely wasn‘t expecting it, and my son wasn’t long for the saddle that day! The next time we rode out we tied the dogs up in the barn, but as we reached that culvert that horse kept his eye glued to that culvert, so that the farther he got past it the more his head was bent around. I’ve never seen a horse walk that straight while his head was bent around to his flank. Horses remember what has happened in the past! If they didn’t we couldn’t train them - but they don’t live there! And they can anticipate things like their feeding times. For that matter whenever my horses hear the door on our trailer opening or closing they get all excited - but they don’t live in the future either!
They live in the here and now! They’re thinking about their companions, or that patch of green grass under their nose, or about what might be in your pocket, or how they can get you to scratch that itchy place just behind their elbow, or around the dock of their tail. They’re living in the present, in the here & now! And I can’t help but think that we can learn something from our horses. You see the problem with living in the past is that God isn’t there! And the problem with living in the future is that God can’t meet us there either because we’re not there yet! God can only meet us - we can only experience God’s love - today, right now, right here, in this moment. You see, this day, & this moment, are God’s gifts to us too, and if we waste them longing for the past or dreaming about the future then we’ve lost that gift!

The Psalmist puts it this way. “This is the day that the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it”

But where are you living?

Patty Hobson writes that “We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we are frustrated that the kids aren't old enough and think we'll be more content when they are. After that we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We will certainly be happy when they are out of that stage. We tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice vacation, or when we retire. The truth is, there's no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, when? Your life will always be filled with challenges. It's best to admit this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway. For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin—real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin.
At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life!. This perspective has helped me to see that there is no "way to happiness." Happiness is "the way." So, treasure every moment that you have. And treasure it more because you shared it with someone special, special enough to spend your time… and remember that time waits for no one...
So stop waiting until you finish school, until you go back to school, until you lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds, until you have kids, until your kids leave the house, until you start work, until you retire, until you get married, until you get divorced, until Friday night, until Sunday morning, until you get a new car or home, until your car or home is paid off, until spring, until summer, until fall, until winter, until you are off welfare, until the first or fifteenth, until your song comes on, until you've had a drink, until you've sobered up, until you die, until you are born again to decide that there is no better time than right now to be happy...
Happiness is a journey, not a destination.”

“This is the day that the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it”

But where are you living?
(Excerpted from a March 1st Cowboy Church message)