“We have trained them to think of the future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain – not as something which every man reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”
I can read back through old journals and remember the future I then hoped for. Funny that it starkly resembles the present I now have. Funnier both that, at 15, I thought I would never be here, and at 25, I only want to escape.
We all have a future, whether it’s good or bad we know is yet to be found out. We feel it’s yet to be determined, and though that’s not true (Jer.29:11) we set about trying to determine it, and that it will be a certain ideal of good.
Our ideal of good, however, is just that: an ideal: thoughts about what something could be, but actually isn’t; thoughts about something not yet come about – and therefore imaginary.
If everything we dreamed came to pass [as it has for me, according to my 1996 journal] we may find that we didn’t actually want it after all, that our ideal of good wasn’t real. We may find that we wasted too much time living in that imaginary future and striving to make it possible.
“We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbows end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the Future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.” Screwtape (by C.S. Lewis)
I can read back through old journals and remember the future I then hoped for. Funny that it starkly resembles the present I now have. Funnier both that, at 15, I thought I would never be here, and at 25, I only want to escape.
We all have a future, whether it’s good or bad we know is yet to be found out. We feel it’s yet to be determined, and though that’s not true (Jer.29:11) we set about trying to determine it, and that it will be a certain ideal of good.
Our ideal of good, however, is just that: an ideal: thoughts about what something could be, but actually isn’t; thoughts about something not yet come about – and therefore imaginary.
If everything we dreamed came to pass [as it has for me, according to my 1996 journal] we may find that we didn’t actually want it after all, that our ideal of good wasn’t real. We may find that we wasted too much time living in that imaginary future and striving to make it possible.
“We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbows end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the Future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.” Screwtape (by C.S. Lewis)
3 comments:
Praise Jesus. I am thankful that He is sovereign over the future and sovereign over the present. His sovereignty over the present ensures that we will get to the future He has in store. That makes me happy.
thanks for the comment Na. I love you.
Good thoughts! Thanks, Sarah Jo!
- look UP
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