BitterSweetLife

The future, the future, it’s out there. Kind of nebulous and fuzzy, but we like the way it glitters. Similar to the milky way, you see the light but can’t make out the stars, and it’s soothing if you don’t stare too hard.

Close your eyes for a moment, breathe deeply, and then you can go back to sharpening your pencil or eating pancakes, whatever it was you were doing before you got so forward-thinking. Brief contemplation of the approaching future can cleanse the mental palate: Relax, and say a prayer; it’s coming your way fast, and you don’t need to do a thing about it.

The future is a helpful accessory this way and would need to be immortalized in poetry if only we knew what it looked like. But we don’t, and that’s the point. Save the poetry: the future is totally and beautifully beyond your control. You can guess at its shape all night without penetrating its mystery.

You can’t know the future’s form until it arrives, and this should break your heart or send shivers down your spine. Ideally both. If these symptoms are missing, you have anesthetized your sense of adventure, of wonder, and your faith will need to be revived.

The future is a reminder that only God is God—the one who holds time in his hands. Thus, we are reminded of a redemption that God is unwinding day by day, an eternity that approaches hour by hour.

The future, the future, it’s coming. It advances inexorably, and we can’t make out its shape, not yet. But Christ makes this fact a cause for worship.