The great, unknown future

One of the most radical changes in "growing up" is that, at a certain point, you stop having your life completely mapped out for you. As a kid, you have elementary school, then middle school, then high school, then college and, for some, then grad school. Your life is pretty much mapped out so that every four years you move to the next level, take on different things and have a change of scenery. It's a nice system, you don't really worry very much about the future because you know "in x years I'll be moving on." Then, quite suddenly one day it stops. There are no more definite road markers in your future that delineate when your life is going to change. Life changes, especially the big ones, start to come at you when you least expect it.

Indeed, this change from a planned to an unplanned future is one of the hardest things about growing up. I can remember when I graduated from college (way back in 2009) that this particular thing was one of the scariest for me. It frightened me that I no longer had a concrete date for when I would move on. Suddenly I realized exactly how vast and unplanned the future was. Talking to other college graduates since then, I've heard the same thing from them. They've talked about how unsettling it is to no longer have that concrete goal. Some have expressed how lost they feel because they don't have this tangible end to look forward to.

This mental transition is probably one of the most difficult and yet most rewarding things a person has to go through in life. It requires an acceptance of "not knowing", something that goes against the grain for man. It requires that one accept the fact that the future cannot be known and that all we have is the present. However, once someone can do this, there comes an incredible joy in not knowing. Liz and I don't know where are lives will take us. We have hopes, we have dreams, but we don't know. Anything could change in a minute. So, all we're left with is the present.

It is a joy to me to know that, God willing, in twenty years my life will probably be similar to the one I'm living now. My days will most likely still consist of prayer, work, play and loved ones. I probably won't be living in any dorms, and I won't be reverting back to the four year model. I'll be trying to make ends meet, and I'm happy with that. Various things in my life may change, especially things that definitely do change. In the next 20 years there will be joys and sorrows, dying and living. I'll probably lose loved ones, but then hopefully I will also gain some also.

Of course, I may be completely off base. God may call me to Himself at some point in the next 20 years, and that's something I have to be ready for as well. Thus, I don't really know what to expect, but I do know that God and joy will be a part of it, and that's enough for me. I also recognize that if I still had the "four year mentality" that wouldn't be enough. Sometimes, knowing the future is the worst possible thing for man. If we know the future, then we tend to try to live in the future. We wonder what it will be like when this or that happens, instead of dwelling in and enjoying the present.

On Wednesday, I talked about how focusing on the future was focusing on a dream reality. In truth, though, the future is really a great unknown that should only lead us to joy in the present. It should show us that all we have is the present, the day to day. All we have is this moment, this chance for life. The only place and time to meet God, to live out the Christian life, are the here and the now. The chance to leave the "four year mentality" is the chance to encounter God in the closest thing we have to eternity, the present.