Tip of My Iceberg

People plan, prepare, and anticipate Halloween with great excitement.

And just as quickly, it’s gone. Walking around the neighborhoods, exclaiming “trick or treat” with gusto, gathering candy like it’s a career, and existing on a small but significant sugar high makes it all more fun than any child can imagine.

Until it’s over.

It was a little heartbreaking observing kids watch our neighbors take down their Halloween decorations. All the blow-ups are being put away for another year, and as they withered with the air leaking out, it felt like a little of the kids’ energy leaked out with it.

But Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner, so conversations soon shifted to what kids would do during their vacation times and what they wanted for Christmas.

It’s easy to live for the next big thing. Anticipating fun motivates us when days seem monotonous and time drags mercilessly. Rather than being present in the moment, we allow our hearts to race ahead and miss what’s right in front of us.

It’s human nature to anticipate the next big event. With hope or hesitancy. The hard stuff we want to hurry through and put behind us; the fun and fabulous we want to hold onto and leverage the most out of a situation.

When Moses was leading the Israelites out of Egypt, they had a long journey ahead of them. In the wilderness, there wasn’t any available food. The Israelites were moaning and groaning, demanding that Moses take them back to the place of 430 years of bondage because they at least had food. They thought he’d brought them to the wilderness to starve.

God intervened.

“Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for THAT DAY. In this way, I will test them and see whether they will follow My instructions. On the sixth day, they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.’” Exodus 16:4-5. They were told to gather enough manna for each day. Some gathered a lot; some very little. Everyone had just enough.

What they ignored was that on the sixth day, they were to gather twice as much because the seventh day was a sacred day, during which no one was to work. But people, in a state of concern, went out on the seventh day to gather their manna. There wasn’t any there. The people were worried they wouldn’t have enough food, and it made them anxious. Worry takes us out of the moment.

But God. He takes care of our needs, and He makes it possible for us to be in the moment without stressing. Enjoying the moment without losing time looking ahead.

Jesus made a comment about how we need to focus on Him, not worrying about what we can’t control.

“What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving….Give your entire attention to what Go 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 6:31, 34.

Jumping from experience to experience, avoiding the uncomfortable, and seeking the next grand thing, can be exhausting. Being present with God in the here and now can give us more comfort and stability than we can imagine.

We need to just pause, breathe, and be aware that He’s near to us all.