It’s a fearful time for many right now.  Many might include you.  Covid-19 is here.  It’s real.  There’s no doubting its impact.  However, one of these days for most of us it will be but a distant memory.  In the meantime, there’s something we can all do.  We can embrace the moment.

“I can see the future is less and less there, and the past has vanished in the air.  -Trey Anastasio / Light lyrics

The moment is not just a Zen thing.  Jesus said, “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.  Is not the life more than the meat, and the body than raiment? Matthew 6:25”  Jesus’ point?  It’s not that we shouldn’t plan or think about tomorrow.  We should do both these things.  However, when he says we should take no thought, he is saying don’t worry.  Don’t overthink it.  Don’t obsess.  Focus on the present.  Does that sound like you?

Jesus goes on to talk about how beautiful birds and flowers are.  It’s almost as though he’s saying take time to smell the flowers.  Look how much God cares for them and takes care of them.  If he cares so much for them, doesn’t it make sense that he cares for you!  Right now.  At this moment.  What are you worried about.  The message reads, “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.  God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes” (Matthew 6:34).

This reminds me of a story a pastor once told.  A woman was once flying on a plane and the pastor noticed she was very nervous and anxious.  The flight was smooth and there were no delays yet the woman would not settle down.  Finally, she asked the pastor to pray for dying grace.  “Dying grace?”, the pastor replied.  “Lady, what you need is flying grace!”.  This story sums up what many people right now.  Rather than focusing on what might possibly happen, we need to focus on our current reality.

What if rather than worrying about what is going to happen or how bad your current situation is, you reflected on all the good that is happening right now?  I bet you could come up with quite a list!  In fact, I’m willing to guess you are healthy (otherwise I doubt you’d be reading this).  You may even still be working and have food and shelter.  Chances are your family is healthy.  That makes quite a good list, wouldn’t you say?

Here’s an example of not living in the moment.  Work.  That’s right.  Sometimes you’re at work and your mind is on everything else rather than the task at hand.  Instead, you are just waiting for the magic hour to come so that you can vacate your job and have fun.  What if you embraced the time at hand as the magic hour?

Sadly, I know this from experience.  I look at things a whole lot differently than I did when I was younger.  I used to frown and fret when the future seemed scary and there were a whole lot of things about the past that I wanted to change.  Time and experience changed most of that.  I like what the Apostle Paul wrote, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content” (Philippians 4:11).  That doesn’t mean I have arrived.

Paul also told his young protégé Timothy, “Godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6).

What if looking at this crisis as an obstacle, you decided to focus on it as an opportunity?

For example, take for instance the Stock Market.  Three weeks before this current market plunge, I upped my retirement contribution by 5%!  But guess what?  I’m not going to change it back.  It’s not the time to cut bait and run.  It’s time to fish!  I’m far from a financial wizard but I do have enough sense to know that the money we put aside will buy much more and will inflate over time.  The stock market has gained historically over time.  It’s a proven fact.  Yet I have talked to many people who are pulling the plug on their 401k or reducing or eliminating their contribution.  Yes, that seems logical based on the current performance.  However, when Dave Ramsey says to stick with it and that is the consensus of people who know more about this subject, it makes perfect sense to heed their advice.

Now, is not the time to flake out or jump ship!

“Now is the time to embrace the Now!”- Cory MacNeil

Do you know what the Prophet Jeremiah told Israel when they were taken captive for 70 years?  “Jeremiah sent a letter to Babylon, predicting that our captivity will be a long one.  He said, ‘Build homes, and plan to stay.  Plant gardens and eat the food they produce” (Jeremiah 29:28).  To reiterate, he told them to bloom where they were planted.

The same is true of us.  God doesn’t want us to be anxious at this moment in history.  Careful? Yes.  Thoughtful?  Absolutely!  But not worried.  Not stressed.  Not vengeful or regretful.  He wants to connect with us.  To meet our needs.  To teach us that he is capable of providing our every need.  “God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).  Not tomorrow.  Not after the Corona virus is gone.  Now!  At this moment.  As we speak.  Right where you are.  Are you with me?

Have you ever looked back at a time in your life when you felt really successful but in reality you were not?  I have and here are some thoughts on this subject.  Hopefully you can avoid some of the pitfalls I’ve fallen into.

The real problem with success is it’s a moving target.  Or it can be.  You start out thinking of something that will make you really happy.  For instance, more money, marriage, a career…whatever it may be.  Then once you achieve your goal you find out it isn’t quite as satisfying as you thought it would be.  It’s like buying a car and having the new smell evaporate just about the time the first monthly payment is due.

The natural thing to do after this happens is to seek out another goal.  To be healthier, hipper, wealthier, wiser.  None of these are bad things.  In fact, they are rather good things.  Who doesn’t want a nicer house or a bigger bank account.  The problem is when we focus on the destination, we tend to miss out on the journey.

So what is your thing right now?  A better job?  A healthier you?  The best Summer you’ve ever had?  I’ll bet that isn’t a very difficult question for you.  Especially if you live in the West.  Here, life consists of constantly reaching higher and further to achieve something.  First you’re born.  Then you go to school. Then you go to college.  Then you get a job.  Then you get married.  Then you have children.  Then your children have children.  Then you retire.  Then…

If we’re not careful, we can spend so much time focusing on the future that we miss out on the now.

When was the last time you just stopped everything you were doing and celebrated right where you are now?

You may be going through a really difficult season right now.  It may be your marriage.  Or your job.  Or your health.  Or your kids… However, that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world.  If you quit right now that would be a tragedy.  Chances are this will be just a blip on your journey and you have to decide if you’re going to falter or use this as an opportunity to grow.

The bottom line isn’t what you have or what you have done.  The bottom line is who you are becoming regardless of these things. 

In fact, the biggest challenge isn’t who you become after you fail.  Perhaps the biggest challenge is who you will become after you succeed.  I like the response Eugene Peterson gave when an interviewer asked what his plans for the next day were.  In fine fashion, he answered, “I’m thinking about who I’m going to eat with and how I’m going to treat them”.

Think about how many people who allowed fame and fortune to destroy them.

I have to confess that I haven’t always treated people the way I’d like to be treated.  In fact, that’s really been true when I was trying to be more than I was or looking for more of something.   In some cases it meant helping myself to things that I had a right to but didn’t necessarily need.

In the words of a good friend, “We just try all our lives to be more than we are where we’re at”.  Without getting into all the inner workings of this dilemma and how it works, perhaps it’s easier just to look at someone who escaped the temptation.

After Jesus had fasted 40 days and 40 nights the Devil tempted him.

 ^“The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”  Matthew 4:3.  In other words, if you are who you say you are, prove it.  Do something magical.  Unless you do, we won’t believe you.  If you don’t, you probably can’t.  We, however, say things like, “I’ll show them!  I’ll prove myself.

 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God”.  Matthew 4:4 

In the case of Jesus, he proved the devil wrong.  He had reached the point in his life where he had nothing to prove.  Nothing, Nada, zero!  He was comfortable in his own skin and that my friend is the true definition of success!  It’s not about what you have or what you can do.  These things can change in an instant.  It’s about who we’ve become and who we’re becoming.  That’s the bottom line.  

In the words of a wise woman, “People won’t remember what you said or did, but they will remember how you made them feel”.

There are many you love and care for but let’s be honest.  It doesn’t matter what they’re net worth is or what they can do that’s important to you.  What matters is who they are.  You love them for who they are, not what they can do or how much they’re worth.  You love them because they’re irreplaceable one-of-a-kind people.  And you love them because of who they are.

In fact, I’m willing to bet that they’ve been through all kinds of hurts and heartaches and that’s what makes you love them even more.

My friend, you don’t have to put a mask on to impress people.  You don’t have to impress them with your bank account or your car.  They could probably care less about your talent or your abilities.  What they care about is you.  And that’s the bottom line.

When my wife and I were much younger we wanted a dog.  Not just any dog.  A Cocker Spaniel.  A Buff-colored one.  A female.  Then we read about Jazz.

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The ad read as follows…Cocker Spaniel Puppies.  Two Black Males.  $225.00.  I told my wife we would just look.  She knew better but agreed.  I stopped and took out the money on the way . . . just in case.

The owner took us into a dark shed.  There was a box.  The puppy stood up against the side of the box to greet us.  My wife picked him up and he peed on her as she held his silky body and looked into his chocolate eyes.  I paid and we left.

The passage of time tells me we had no issues with Jazz.  We were the real problem.  We hadn’t planned.  We didn’t know the first thing about training.  We were young and naive but we loved Jazz and he loved us.  In fact, he turned out to be a great dog.

However, one night I was less than happy when he wanted to sing all night because he had been left alone in the living room while we tried to sleep.  Another time, I accidentally stepped on his leg when he got under my feet and he needed knee surgery.

One day in the back yard, I wasn’t paying attention and he ran around the house to the front yard toward the highway.  When I found him he was smelling the tulips.  We also learned early on was not to get between him and his dog dish.

But he also liked to stretch his legs out behind him like a seal while he slept.  He was a snuggle bunny on the couch with my wife.  He enjoyed riding in the car . . . in the front seat of course.  And he would go bonkers when we mentioned it was time to go ‘walkies’.  We also found that when our hearts were heavy we could talk with him and he would sit and listen for hours.

Then, one day a friend was surprised that I had not bought a bird dog.  After doing some reading, I found that Cocker Spaniels were bred to be bird dogs.  So Jazzy became my bird dog.  He wasn’t necessarily the bird dog I had in mind, but a bird dog nonetheless.

Thus began our adventures.  I’d grab my Carhart coat weighed down with shotgun shells, a hat, some boots, and Jazzy and we’d tromp the woods nearby or my old hunting grounds about an hour away from home.

In retrospect, we found a ton of birds!  However, Jazzy’s bird work was less than stellar, at least in my eyes at the time.  In fact, it seemed that any time Jazz found some bird scent, he would go in the opposite direction.  Along with these weaknesses, the only thing he ever fetched was a Rainbow Trout that fell off the hook when I got it close to shore.

The last hunt I remember with him, we were at my Grandmother’s old farm when she was still alive.  We bagged two birds in a row that day!  The first Grouse didn’t make it through a small opening in a brushy fence row after his associate had.  Just before dark, the second Grouse flushed at a pretty good distance and rocketed toward the tops of some Maples before cart-wheeling back to earth.  On the way home, we stopped at McDonald’s and I bought Jazzy a Happy Meal.

While Jazzy stayed close by in cover and constantly checked in, his replacement is usually a speck on the horizon.  Scout is a German Short Haired Pointer who is loaded with brains, drive, athleticism, and intuition.  She can smell a bird from a mile away and this gifting, while a blessing, also gets her into plenty of trouble at times.  All of the commands she obeys so well in the kitchen go out the window when she’s outside.  At times I wonder if a Greyhound crawled under a fence somewhere in her lineage.

This brings me back to Jazz.  We were surprised when he left us at the age of ten.  In retrospect, he was our first child.  Many of the things he taught us were in preparation for our three children to come.  Although we loved Jazz, we weren’t always the best parents.  Again, we knew absolutely nothing about the importance of obedience and proper discipline.  It’s also no surprise that he never turned out to be the bird master I expected him to be since he received little or no training other than being told to fetch.

Maybe things would have been different if I had introduced him to some Pigeons.  I could have taught him to fetch in a short hallway where there were no distractions and little room to escape.  I could have worked with him in the yard.  I could have built upon a string of simple commands.  I could have watched him more in the woods rather than hunting as I always had without a dog.  I could have taken him out with other dogs who had been trained.  But I did none of those things.

The last words I told Jazz through tears were “You’re a good boy.  You’re a good boy.  You’re a good boy.”  And at that moment he was.  Up until that point it had all been his fault.  The lack of harvested birds, the poor work in the field, and the failure to fetch, I now see may have had a lot more to do with me.

While I experienced many sweet times with Jazz in the woods, I missed out on so much.  In fact, I’d give a million dollars for just one more hunt just to watch him do his thing.

Jazz was all about improvisation.  He made music the best way he knew how- naturally.  He was a pleasure to travel with and well-mannered in the home.  He also loved to go hunting!  In fact, I think he liked it just as much as I did, if not more.  For many years, he went with me where and when no one else would go; he stayed as long as I liked, and was glad to do that whenever I wanted to.

Now, except for the times I find an old photo, he is only an abstraction in my mind.  I imagine his infectious smile and wagging body.  I see him rolling his ball with treats in it around in the dining room of our first house.  I see him sticking his nose in a tulip.  But mostly what I see is that I didn’t appreciate him for who he was and the part he played in my life.  Jazz was much more than a dog, he was my teacher.

What if there was something holding you back from becoming the best version of yourself? Lets talk about that.

The thing we’re talking about affects how you’ll spend this weekend. Your hobbies and career. Your relationships. In fact, it affects our entire life.

For many of us it began when we were young. Walt Disney made a fortune capitalizing on it. We were made to imagine that life was going to be a fairy tale. Everything was going to be perfect. We’d get rich, marry the right person, have the perfect family, live someplace where it’s hot year around.  Yet somehow that’s not happened to most of us.

Most of us would not consider ourselves rich, some of us struggle with marriage, some of our families are less than perfect. And I certainly don’t live someplace where it’s hot all year. Today I think it reached about 50 degrees.

Some people decide the hassle just isn’t worth it. Complacency is much easier. Eventually, we settle.  There may be more but for now, what we are and have is enough.  So what if we’re overweight or in debt.  It’s too much work and bother to have things otherwise.

While complacency can have negative affects, it’s not a bad idea to embrace your present reality. In fact, acceptance is a great first step. And until you define your present reality, you cannot change it. Be it your marriage or your finances, determining that which pertains to reality is a huge first step in the right direction.

But don’t camp out there.  Don’t camp out in the land of Despair.  Don’t camp out in the land of Depression because of what the Dr. said.  Don’t camp out in the land of Sadness because your spouse served you divorce papers this week or is threatening too.  Don’t camp out because your daughter says she hates you.  Make plans to move forward.

Keep doing what you’re doing differently.

I know that goes against common thinking, but there is some truth in it.  You don’t have to quit your job to change your life.  Nor do you have to move to another country to begin again.  You don’t have to leave your wife or find new kids.  Work with what you have.

What keeps many of us back is our search for perfection.

Perfection can take you in the wrong direction.

If you’re creative, the situation can be worse.  In your mind’s eye you see your life as it could and should be.  You imagine how your spouse and kids should treat you.  You imagine what your house or 401k should look like.  You know what your perfect job would be.  Then there is reality.  And in between what could and should be and what is (reality), there is a gap.

We don’t like the gap.  We want to close it.  For some of us reality is too painful.  We don’t want a gap.  We want what we want and when it comes to closing the gap, we think we need the perfect strategy. The problem is we don’t know what it is.  If we did we would use it and our problems would be over.

The good news is there is no perfect strategy.  In our minds there is, and we’ll do whatever it takes to discover it.  We’ll spend money, attend conferences, call people, read, go to the Dr.  Someone, we think, must know the perfect solution.

There’s nothing wrong with having a strategy.  You’ll need one if you’re going to succeed.  Doing nothing is still a strategy.

When developing a strategy, doing something is usually better than doing nothing.  Spending 5 minutes a day with your child is better than spending no time at all with them.  Putting 10 dollars a week into a savings account is better than putting no money aside.  Exercising for three minutes a day is better than no exercise at all.

However, when we desire the perfect strategy, we often spend more time searching for it rather than implementing an imperfect strategy that we can adapt or change later.

An imperfect strategy that can be improved or shaped is better than no strategy at all.

So this is how it works.  Continue with the strategy that you are using now until a better one comes along.  Put another way, do the best with what you have now until you can do better.

Take for example, the writing of a dissertation.  Our tendency is to think that it has to be the best thing we’ve ever written.  In some ways, it should be.  But in actuality the things we write after our dissertation should be better.  The dissertation is just practice for the real work to come.

Or think about your wedding.  It has or had to be perfect.  Yet, a wedding is just a preview of things to come.  You can have a horrible wedding and go on to make a beautiful life together.

The truth is life is messy and the only perfect things that exist exist in fairytales and your mother-in-laws imagination.  🙂

If you’re having trouble praying perfectly, pray poorly until you can do better.

If you’re not the perfect husband, don’t give up because your brother-in law is a much better one.

Write poorly until you can write better.

Bench 100 pounds until you can bench 200.

But whatever you do, keep on doing.  If you have any hope at all of closing the gap, it’s going to require action on your part.  You’ve come too far to cash in your chips and sit on a beach in Maui for the rest of your life.  Don’t settle for less.  Be the best version of yourself.  Study, learn, grow and reach for the stars.  Until then, embrace the gap.  If you still have a gap, you’re still alive and that’s better than the alternative.