As a Christian, I believe that the future is not a land I can visit. It will arrive soon enough, and nothing that I do will give me the faintest glimpse of it. I can guess, I can try to influence, I can plan as well as anyone…but ultimately, I cannot see the future. It is a closed door.
The future is God’s country. He alone may wander there.
And yet, how often do I try to divine what I believe will happen? Line up the signs and look for patterns? Spend more time worrying about what-will-be than I do about what-is? Plan ahead? Write a script in my mind for how I hope a scenario will play out?
We play with the future. We try futile guessing games. Our ancestors spent much of the long, cold, lonely winter trying out different kinds of fortune-telling. Who will my husband be? How will I die? Will the harvest fare well, this year?
They read apple peels, tea leaves, candle flickers, melting wax. They counted birds. They threw stones and bones. In an era when life was so easily snuffed out, they wanted to know what was going to happen to them.
These things can seem old-fashioned and backward to us, but their echoes remain. Even the most pragmatic human can find themselves feeling that a difficult January will “set the tone” for the rest of the year.
Set the tone? What could we mean by that? That January is an omen? We wouldn’t say it aloud, but deep down we feel the fear.
What if a bad start to the year means a horrible future?
But the future is God’s country. He alone may wander there.
May this message cheer you: that no matter how your January has gone, it is not a sign for the rest of your year. If it has been a good start, then wonderful! Celebrate what is, and do not let anything tear down your joy!
But if your January has been wayward, frustrating, confusing, wild, or tempest-tossed, you are not doomed to a year of trouble. Instead, you are invited to climb into God’s hand and wait, and watch, as He turns the rough material of your life into something beautiful, useful, even miraculous.
These winter days are omens, indeed, but not of the future. Instead, every day is a prophecy of grace to come. Fragrant, and fresh from a distant land where we may not wander.
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"The future is God’s country. He alone may wander there."
This is gold--I think I'll write it down. Absolutely and desperately needed this. My January hasn't been too terrible but the future January I have been trying to divine through my own meager implements has been scary and uncertain. I've been trying to convince myself to do "the next right thing" and to trust in God (frequent recitations of "Jesus, I trust in you"), but they have not helped me to have peace.
This reminds me that trust is both giving the problem to God and also--letting go of it. It's in His hands. Watch Him work.
Thank you.
Wonderful words! They bring to mind another image you brought up recently, of the threads and knots on the backside of the tapestry of our lives -- God as the Weaver. Seems to me this is about the rough, unpredictable, unexpected, untidy, and surprising reality of Romans 8:28.