The Future and the Past Meet You

The Future and the Past Meet You

Simultaneously, they come unwrapped to greet you
in packages without bows or ribbons. Chaotically and
without an RSVP, their arrival is like when the land line
rings at the same time someone is ringing at the front door.
Your hands are full of potting soil and you are planting
colors in the back yard while thoughts are whirling like bees
around the nest of an unsolved problem. While you are
signing the little piece of paper for the UPS driver at the
same time that you are telling the nice man on the phone
thank you for calling but your minimal and infrequent
television viewing activity does not necessitate the adorning
of your home with a satellite dish, your son/husband/uncle
enters with his feet dispensing potting soil on the carpet
you just had cleaned. You can’t get mad. You did it
yourself just a half hour ago.

They will keep coming, and coming together, until the end,
of course. You will always be unprepared, in spite of your
downsizing according to the “Organization for Morons” book
that you still manage to hold on to, along with all the other
orphans that are scattered on shelves throughout the house
and garage.

They will come to meet you so fast that you will lose interest
in what is going on in the world. A plague here, a war there,
what will it matter. You cannot control anything and your voting
does not seem to matter anyway. And you cannot change a
thing, but you will try, and I admire you for that of course. But
eventually you will realize that the wheels have fallen off, the
parks will be permanently full of litter, and the only people who
agree with you are dead people who wrote great books that nobody
will ever read, except for the really old people you meet who have
no energy left to do much about anything except try and walk
down the hall without pooping. And read.

I have recently been reminded that loving the people in my path
is the only thing that matters. The past and the future, nonexistent
as they truly are, are nevertheless influential in pointing to the
substance of something I wrote once. And it seems right to remind
us that God wants us to see that there really is one reason why we
are still breathing and walking around on this planet. Every day we
are given opportunities to earn wealth that is eternal. Each moment
of our lives, we are either serving others or ourselves, either tending
to the needs of others or not. When we make ourselves available to
be a servant, God quietly, mysteriously, and secretly, guides or steers
us into the lives of others so that we can be dispensers of His grace.
And we benefit eternally when we do.