The speed of life propelled by the nearly instant electronic media that we use every day can have a significant effect on each of us. Our minds and hearts flit from one thing to another without even realizing how often we are not fully present. All of this also tempts us to not be as satisfied with the gift of the present. We scroll through things online that we think will add to our happiness and keep looking ahead for what we hope will be different, better, or more for tomorrow. Contentment can seem elusive many days.

We talk about wanting to slow down but the habits we have acquired keep creeping back in. The enforced change of pace during the pandemic revealed how much shifting our lives into a slowed neutral pace felt uncomfortable. The pandemic also didn’t help us with the stress and uncertainty that came with it. Some are still sorting out how to move back into whatever the new pace for us might be and somewhat startled at our responses to feeling odd going to a shopping mall or movie.

Uncertainties have left more of us anxious than ever before as we desire to know more about what lays ahead while also dreading or fearing it. Some of us have come through these months with a fresh appreciation for the gift and provision of each day and want to hang onto some of that as we move back into many things we couldn’t do during the pandemic.

“When we are young, time goes very slowly, not because time is anything but regular because we are always rushing then. Living in the moment is not the mark of youth. Instead, the young are always on the way to somewhere else. They have no patience for now – because they live their lives trying to get beyond the confines of now to the possibilities of soon. They want to get to be older, to be independent, to be important, to be wealthy, to be somebody. They are immersed in wanting.

The old, on the other hand, have long ago exhausted both the wanting and the going and the striving. They are immersed in being. Being alive, being healthy, being present to the moment, being who they are, being happy, being young again in delight and in vision.”

Joan Chittister

Little wonder that we as believers have challenges living in “the now and the not yet.” We forget how often we lean forward to Christ’s return and lose the opportunities of today. We forget what God so patiently tried to teach the children of Israel in the wilderness by supplying them manna just for that one day and what happened when they didn’t trust that. We forget that God doesn’t tell us a lot of things in advance because his provision for those things will not arrive until those things happen. He also knows we would seek to try to control what isn’t yet upon us without trusting Him for the “then.”

“God conceals much that we do not need to know, yet we do know that He calls us His own sheep by name and leads them out. When does that begin? Does the Shepherd overlook anything that the sheep need?”

Elisabeth Elliott

The matter of looking at time brings a song from the epic musical Les Misérables to mind (“One Day More”) and how those in this story of the revolution in France are measuring time. The lyricists (Alain Boublil and Herbert Kretzmer) begin the song with the lines, “One day more, another day, another destiny” and goes on considering life and what lays ahead. As the powerful song closes, the words reflect on a truth that is more to the point for each of us…

“Tomorrow we’ll discover
What our God in Heaven has in store
One more dawn
One more day
One day more”

We forget in the paradox of living within time that we both have more of it and less of it than we imagine. What is key for us each day is what we do with the gift of time given to us. We can squander it by looking back at what didn’t happen, what we missed, what we were owed, or what we regret or stretch out trying to live in a better tomorrow that we paint with better colors and tones. All the while, the time under our noses keeps slipping away.

As we stand on tiptoes anticipating Christ’s return, let us not forget to take advantage of every moment of today to live well for Him and use that which He has placed within us for his glory.

“Time is a wondrous thing, if only I fill it well. If I do not allow the passing of time to diminish my spirit but, instead, see it as a call to live life to the dregs… Then time is my friend, not my enemy. It gives me a heightened sense of life. It urges me to discover it all. It marks the fullness of life, its mellowing, and it releases in me the self that has been coming into existence from the beginning.”

Joan Chittister

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Every day we read or hear about battles, conflicts, and wars being fought in various parts of the world. As the darkness in the world deepens, there are rumors of wars added to the current ones we may know about. We likely do not hear about some wars fought in places we have never heard about in the 24-hour news cycle. 

Books and movies remind us of the horrors of wars that have plagued mankind since the beginning. We say we long for peace but war dominates the human timeline.

But there is a war we talk about less often that poses the toughest battle and when first lost, sets the stage for all the others.

“One of the things we forget is that the major big-deal war in our lives is not a war with things outside us; it’s the war that still rages inside us. In every situation, location, and relationship in our lives, there is a war for control of our hearts. This means that what rules our hearts shapes our words and actions. So the big war is not any of the smaller ones we have with other people, debt, material possessions, sex, and so on. No, the war is more foundational than all of these.” 

Paul David Tripp

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Our hearts were created to be connected, bound, to that of God’s but his enemy, Lucifer, wanted that connection and in the Garden of Eden he set the trap to try to destroy that connection with God. He appealed to the hearts of Adam and Eve with cunning and purpose using subtle doubts to gain the ground of their hearts. They lost the battle and with it, humanity has been in the toughest battle for our own hearts every day. That forbidden tree left within us the seeds for destruction of our hearts by battling our desires in any and every area of our life. 

Our days are filled with so many tasks, responsibilities, and wear-and-tear, that we seldom recognize the daily battle for our hearts (even as believers). We are drawn to anything we think will bring us life in the busy dailyness of living. We’re distracted by one shiny thing after another and determine we will look for only a minute or two and in that choice, we give the ground of our hearts to the enemy’s playground.

“Every day you attach the hopes and dreams of your heart, your satisfaction, and your joy to something. Every day you look to something to give you life. Every day you give yourself to something in the hope it will give you peace and joy. Every day you attach your identity to something, and there are only two places to look. You are either looking for life in creation and you are on your way to crushing disappointment, or you are looking to the Creator and are on your way to lasting peace of heart.” 

Paul David Tripp

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Modern life offers an endless array of ways to lead our hearts astray. And they are not just the most talked about ones of drugs, sexual temptations of every kind, and assaults on other humans in various ways from their values and beliefs to their physical bodies and possessions. Those are obvious and clearly reveal the enemy’s ploy and the heart’s corrupt desires.

Others are less obvious to us because they seem so small and innocuous. We don’t think they will do much harm or that anyone will notice. So on a bad day or a long day at work, we desire to comfort ourselves or reward ourselves with something and our first thought is not usually to go to God with that need to be soothed and encouraged. Instead, we may go shopping at that favorite little boutique we like so much, drive by our favorite ice cream shop and check out the favorite flavor we can rarely resist, or drive through our special coffee shop and pick up a latte that hits the spot in the moment.

None of these are what might be called deadly sins but reveal where we look first. I am guilty as well. This week I was near my favorite Italian coffee shop and their seasonal hazelnut pistachio latte seemed to be calling my name to soothe my disappointment at not checking off as many things as I wanted to accomplish that day. I don’t believe God looked at me with angst but knew I didn’t first take those feelings to him to hear his thoughts on the matter and receive encouragement that would be more nourishing and long-lasting than the latte.

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Day by day we will have the same battleground – our heart. The more often we have small missteps and look in places other than God, the duller our hearts will become to what will truly satisfy us like nothing else. Most of us know our indulgences in other places never can bring us what we desire or need except in that one moment that is then gone in a flash. Living for ourselves will never hit the place where we gain peace and joy.

^“6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. ⁷ Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” 

Philippians 4:6-7 (MSG)

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Photo by Pam Ecrement

My day started out well enough despite some weariness from a long day the previous day. I had a leisurely lunch with a special friend and headed home for a list of assorted odds and ends, some of these were ones I had on my radar screen and some showed up unexpectedly.

The mix of these odds and ends gradually built into a cacophony in my head that left it throbbing and reduced my capacity to really get started with writing or to complete anything else on the list. I was soon spinning my wheels and getting more stuck in the mud in the process. Nothing seemed to be going well and I could not resolve several projects that were bearing down on my mind as a result of a deadline attached to them.

Photo by Pam Ecrement

After hours of frustration with little accomplished, I shut down the computer and tried to shift my mind away from everything I had been struggling with in order to relax and get ready for sleep. If you are guessing that I was not very successful at either of these things, you are right!

It was clear that I could not be productive, but neither could I relax and sleep did not come to relieve my aching head for hours after I got into bed. My shoulders were taut and scrunched up to my ears in tension and my mind refused to stop rehearsing the last four or five hours prior to getting into bed.

When morning arrived, I felt the hangover of too little sleep and all that was incomplete still facing me. I began to try to pick one piece of the thread to unravel the mess with only modest success. Prayer did not seem to reach the place I needed to be. My mind was still scattered and resulted in more little things like misplacing my keys at one point and my phone at another.

I needed help!

Photo by Pam Ecrement

I texted my dear friend who had shared lunch with me and asked her to pray for me. She is one of those people who truly will pray when asked to do so. As she came alongside me by praying, I began to feel some release and a short phrase from Song of Solomon came to mind, “little foxes spoil the vines”. It brought a smile to my face as I reflected on the state I had gotten into over “little things”. I felt as if the Lord was gently reminding me I had lost sight of what was important. It’s the sort of thing all of us periodically get snared by when we are not looking or expecting an assault.

Most of us may not routinely delve into the Song of Solomon with its apparent allegorical style. We enjoy it as we read the lavish descriptions of love written there, but the nuances of meaning in the midst of graphic descriptions are not always clear to us. As I checked several commentaries, the clarity of meaning of that phrase was not as precise as I would have liked.

One commentary suggested that little things can creep in nearly unnoticed and yet do great mischief and if not addressed lead to even greater problems. What I sensed from the Lord beyond that was a reminder that I am grafted into the vine as his daughter, but if I am too weary, tired, or bogged down with the cares of this life these little “foxes” can nibble away at the fruit in my life, destroy grace, squelch good motives and direction.

The phrase brought about a grace-filled gentle conviction that my mind needs to be alert to little things that nibble at the eternal relationship found in the vine because when this happens I become irritable, frustrated, and less able to see the forest for the trees or to reflect Christ’s character.

Photo by Pam Ecrement

In “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”, Legolas speaks to Gimli about the trees of Fangorn Forest waking up. How much our family loves this trilogy of movies!

I don’t live in Fangorn Forest and I am fairly certain our trees do not speak to each other, but at long last spring has steadily and slowly arrived and the trees indeed are waking up.

I love the word picture of trees awakening. It can be easy to see the trees as dead after autumn in the Midwest and other parts of the country that enjoy all four seasons. They are not dead at all, but only asleep, in a state of dormancy, conserving their resources. The Lord created them to temporarily stop growth, development, and physical activity to conserve energy. One of the reasons their leaves drop in the fall is so fewer parts of the tree need nourishment.

God has designed them so incredibly that they actually change their membranes on the surface areas so that water migrates from inside the cells to the spaces between the cells. This makes them more pliable. Then, as the trees convert starches to sugar in the fall, these sugars act in the same capacity as antifreeze, lowering the overall freezing point of the trees.

How marvelous are His works! What a Creator He is!

If He has so carefully designed the mechanisms of the trees to withstand the harsh winds and temperatures of winter, how could we ever be tempted to doubt His provision for us during the harsh seasons of our lives?

Everywhere we look, He reminds us that He has and is providing for us. We can look at the tree as provision for its beauty, its fruit, its shade, or its wood, but it often goes without notice of the provision for the tree in order for it to provide all of those things.

There is a truth there. His provision comes layer upon layer in intricate detail. That provision may seem scarce or non-existent even as the trees appear dead in winter, but the Lord has not forgotten.

The last few days I have been able to enjoy walks where the Lord has been drawing my eyes to the evidences of His creation being summoned to awaken. The steadily increasing warmth of the days and the lengthening hours of light are nudges to the trees to awaken even though an unseasonable few warm days early can fool the trees.

Light. How key it is to everything!

Trees and plants of all kind need light to be fruitful.

We, too, need light to bring us out of the darkness, to awaken us into life.

We need ongoing light for growth and fruitfulness.

We need the Light of the World!

I can only imagine what it will be like when the Light of the World returns and awakens this world!  Then we will truly behold Him and see the whole of what we cannot see now.

Our minds and hard drives can be cluttered with many things. Our hearts also can hold a myriad of emotions, beliefs, commitments, and convictions.

I think most of us have experienced the challenge of having our computers slow down as the memory gets overloaded. It happens with the cell phones we carry in our hands as well as every other electronic device. If we have done much work with electronics, we soon decide that when we need to purchase something new, we want to purchase something with more memory (the most we can afford).

We marvel at all that can be stored in these devices that seem to get smaller every year, but we forget the most incredible storage of data and memory created or designed is the human brain.

I know you are likely thinking about how much you cannot recall no matter what your age, but the human brain is so complex that the exact amount of what can be contained is not measurable even though it must certainly be limited. What does science say about this most complex brain that our Creator designed and that exceeds any device created by man?

Some research now suggests that the human mind can hold as much as the entire Internet! One study found that each synapse in the brain could store an average of 4.7 bits; spread throughout the brain, that would be about 1 petabyte, the equivalent of 1,000 terabytes or 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. Other scientists suggest we have as much as 2.5 petabytes of memory storage.

So why do we forget things? It’s because it is not really about capacity. The reality is our storage process is slower than our experience of the world. Here’s an example. If we pretend, we have an iPod with infinite storage, even if we could store every song ever written we would still need to buy and upload all that music and then pull up individual songs when we wanted to play them. But what if we wanted to have all that music and could load it? It would take us 2,000 years to play it all.

Think about this truth. It is impossible to quantify the amount of information in our brain because it consists of more information than we are consciously aware of.

We sometimes get a glimpse of that when someone we know has a stroke.

Our brains consist of more than facts and faces and measurable skills. They also contain functions like how to speak and move, how to feel and express emotions. We do all that with great efficiency. It only takes about the amount of energy needed to create a dim light from a light bulb. And we do all that while the average brain cell is inactive about 80 percent of the time.

“I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” 

Psalm 139:14 (ESV)

I have been mulling over this information because of reading Virginia Prodan’s book, Saving My Assassin, which I reviewed a few years ago.

What stood out repeatedly was how many verses of scripture were memorized by the persecuted Christians of Romania under the repressive regime of Nicolae Ceausescu that ended in 1989. Bibles were forbidden. The period preceded our easy access to a Bible in unlimited numbers of translations via apps on our electronic devices. The body of Christ was under persecution and the Word was essential to sustain them. So, they hid the Word of God in their hearts where no one could steal it from them.

“I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”  

Psalm 119:11 (ESV)

David wrote those words. He “hid” the Word of God in his heart is how some translations read. David knew the value of scripture. He stored it, hid it, in his heart so that it would be available to him whenever he needed it. He valued it so highly that he was aware he might be robbed of it or lose it if it were something in a hard copy form, so he treasured it and placed it where no one could take it from him.

The Word doesn’t say David stored it in his memory. I think he knew what we know. Our memories can fail us.

Perhaps it said he placed it in his heart because he had so often read the Word that his heart had been molded by it, so the impression remained embedded on his soul.

I confess that I do not have vast amounts of scripture memorized, but I have many verses that have been woven into the fabric of my heart and soul much as words of love letters from my husband have been carried there.

Many of us are blessed with great freedom to own as many Bibles as we wish and read them wherever we desire, but if that was lost to us for some reason, what has been hidden in our hearts?