Faith in the Present Moment

April 29, 2009
2 Peter 3:8-13 (The Message)
“Don’t overlook the obvious here friends. With God, one day is as good as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day. God isn’t late with his promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining himself on account of you, holding back the End because he doesn’t want anyone lost. He’s giving everyone space and time to change. But when the Day of God’s Judgment does come, it will be unannounced, like a thief. The sky will collapse with a thunderous bang, everything disintegrating in a huge conflagration, earth and all its works exposed to the scrutiny of Judgment. Since everything here today might well be gone tomorrow, do you see how essential it is to live a holy life? Daily expect the Day of God, eager for its arrival. The galaxies will burn up and the elements melt down that day—but we’ll hardly notice. We’ll be looking the other way, ready for the promised new heavens and the promised new earth, all landscaped with righteousness.”

When I was a very little girl, my parents began to observe a predominant trait in me that I’m not certain they appreciated at the time. It was inevitable that we would head out on a day full of errands and visiting. We would arrive at the drugstore, for instance, and by arrive I mean park the car in the parking lot. I would hop out of the car and say, “Okay, where are we going now?” They would exhort me to focus on where we were and what we were doing and we would be at the next place soon enough. We’d arrive at my great-grandmother’s house. I would hug her, go play in her bedroom for a few minutes and then announce, “Okay, where are we going now?” Can’t you just feel the roll of my parents eyes?

The Scripture tells us that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” But what happens when the ‘what we do not see’ (that next part of the journey for which we are anxious) part seems NEVER to come? Surely you’ve had those times—longing for . . .(you fill in the blank)________- a material item, a new job, a new relationship, a child to be born into the family, etc. You know this thing as your heart’s desire and it never seems to show up for you.

This is precisely how the people of Peter’s day were feeling. They were so discouraged because they had operated on the thought that Christ’s return was eminent. Yet they found themselves waiting and waiting and waiting but no physical Christ was showing up. The false teachers made sense of this by saying that the promise that Christ would return was false. But Peter couldn’t tolerate such a thought. It had become evident to Peter that he would not see Christ’s return but he remained convinced that those to whom he wrote would see it in their lifetimes. In the long run, however, the time of the fulfillment proves to be irrelevant to the message that Peter hopes to convey.

Peter’s point is that while the people must expect that Christ will return in each forthcoming day, they also must be able to focus on the present moment. By focusing on the moment that is out there in the future, they miss the opportunity to focus on the status of their relationship with God in this moment. Up until now, they have turned Christ’s return (known as the parousia) into a grand event—but an event more important than the present moment--and their focus on that future moment keeps them from seeing what God is doing in the present moment.

Peter suggests that if we would learn to pay attention and appreciate this moment for what it is, if we would seek to learn and grow now, then the thing for which we long and which we have been promised would show up one day in a such a way that we would barely notice it because it would be such a natural occurrence.

That was the lesson my parents wished I had learned at three or four! Thirty some odd years later, I am just starting to understand it myself and in my shallow understanding I see what Peter was saying.

Such freedom comes when we are able to know first that God does fulfill our hearts’ desires but God fulfills them in God’s remarkable timing and not in ours. Letting go of our control over the details of when and where, etc. enables us to more fully surrender. In that surrender comes an undeniable peace and an ability to flow with life such that we come to appreciate the desire’s fulfillment more when it does happen.

Likely, for Peter’s audience, they would need to comprehend this experientially. Maybe the same is true of us and maybe we can do our part by working toward trusting God’s promises for our lives, knowing God’s faithfulness in those promises and getting ourselves out of the way so that God can work in our lives. May we embrace the true faith to which Peter has exhorted us! Amen.