Be Present. You are exactly where you supposed to be. Be where your feet are. Bloom where you are planted.

These phrases are plastered throughout our city, embroidered onto pillows and screen-printed onto $6 greeting cards throughout San Diego. While they may stem from an epicurean spirit, my soul appreciates these rare reminders that actually square with biblical realities even if their sources or spirit don’t. As a chronic over-thinker of the past and a fearful future-caster, I’ll take any help I can get to stay in the present.

That being said, a Christian’s ability to be present requires a right understanding of the past and a right vision for the future. This is where the cute murals and my morals part ways. Our ability to stay present isn’t rooted in a dissociation from history or vague visions for a future we manifest. Our ability to live in the present relies solely on what we have learned of God from the past and what He has secured for our future. That’s why God’s ancient people were commanded to look back and build strange stone memorials. God needed them to remember whom He revealed Himself to be in their past. He also gave His people future promises, specifically of a coming Messiah, to enable them to live through often painful presents.

As believers on the other side of the Cross of Christ, we anchor our ability to be present in the past of Christ’s First Coming and the future of His Second Coming. Suspended as we are between two such sure anchors, we can learn to live in the tension of the present. Tightrope walkers need long balancing poles as they practice to walk on such a thin wire; Christ’s two comings become not only the anchors which hold the present in place, but also the long rod which help us stay standing on such a thin sliver of time and space.

If only I could live this reality consistently. I tend to find myself careening towards the net or cowering in fear rather than standing courageously in the tension filled with trust.

These years with older teens in some ways force you into the future, as wise planning for tomorrow starts today. If I am honest, my soul has been fraught with fear for the future: How will we afford college? Where will these boys end up? What steps have we accidentally skipped? How many deadlines did we miss? What needs to happen next? My mind paces through these puzzles as my head lies on my pillow. As my mind paces, my heart races. The Lord has been using a portion from a poem from the past to help me stay present with Him and in Him.

A Poem Helping Me Stay Present

In his poem “The Discharge,” Herbert plays on the legal idea of being discharged from a duty– in this case, the duty of inquiring into an unknown-to-us but well-known-to-God future. In the first few stanzas, he draws the imagery of a believer signing over his or life to God: “And well if was for thee, when this befell, / That God did make / Thy business his, and in thy life partake: / For thou canst tell, / If it be his once, all is well.”

He continues, “Man and the present fit: if he provide, / He breaks the square./ This hour is mine: if for the next I care, / I grow too wide, / and do encroach upon death’s side.”

He ends with the following stanza: “Either grief will not come, or it if must, / Do not forecast. / And while it cometh, it is almost past. / Away distrust; / My God hath promis’d, he is just.”

“Man and the present fit.” Jesus sought to teach his disciples this reality in the Sermon on the Mount when He reminded them that worrying doesn’t add a day to their lives. Besides, they need not worry like the world when they had a Father who loved to provide and had their days written in His book before one of them came to be (Matthew 6: 25–34; Psalm 139: 16). God’s people need not be filled with care for the future because He is so full of care for them (Psalm 139: 17–18). “This hour is mine,” but my days are all His (Psalm 31:15).

I love how Amy Carmichael captured this reality: “We hardly see one inch of the narrow lane of time. To our God, eternity lies open as a meadow.” While I experience the present narrowly and nervously, all of time is laid out before Him entirely. He is already in the future. He will meet me there even as He is with me here. So, yes, I am exactly where I need to be–near Him who changes not as He governs every change I experience. But that doesn’t fit as neatly on a pillow as “Be present,” does it?