Learning to live in the moment....

25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

Matthew 6

If God is the DJ, then life is the dance floor, love is the rhythm, and you are the music..

Pink

It was a Thursday night and I'd been dragged by my fifty something year old mother to a Latin dance club. On Thursdays they started off the evening with salsa lessons, and then the 'serious' dancers came out. It was lovely and different. Nobody was trying to pick anyone else up, no, they were all here to dance, to live, to have fun. But even in the midst of this I found myself worried. Worried about tomorrow, worried about next week, worried about that paper that was sitting on my desk undone, or that someone would think me a fool for letting go and enjoying myself. I was not living in the moment, I was living the opposite. I was living for yesterday, tomorrow and next year, and yet the present was passing me by.

Wasn't that was Jesus was imploring us to do in Matthew...to live for today because God could take care of tomorrow. If we lived like this, what would it look like? I think for one we'd appreciate everything more, and we'd definitely pay more attention to the details. If we didn't have to worry about tomorrow wouldn't we give more, knowing that tomorrows needs would be taken care of? Wouldn't we live more, knowing that life was a gift and could be taken away any moment? Wouldn't we laugh more knowing and delighting in a God who provides? And wouldn't we love more, thankful for every moment and gift we received?

Some people take living in the moment as a license to sin, and that's a shame. I don't think Jesus was giving us the right to live selfishly. I think He was showing us a life of gratitude and joy. What child worries about car payments, mortgages or electric bills? Show me a two year old who worries about what he will eat or wear? Does a child worry about his retirement plan or college fund? Does a child think about the next day, does he plan his playtime? No, a child delights in living moment to moment, delighting in each new gift, in each new wonder.

That's how I want to live. I want to live for the moment. I want to look back at my life and know without a doubt that I did not squander a second of it, that what God entrusted me with, I made something out of. That I enjoyed every precious moment he gave to me, and that those moments were not wasted on worry, anxiety, or selfishness. I want to live out a life of child like faith, delighting in my Father.

So, who's in for some salsa dancing?