Now?

In life’s rush, five o’clock at Grand Central, Christmas holidays on 5th Avenue, or Interstate-10 anytime of the day in Redlands, it’s easy to be lost in one’s world.  Leave your cell phone at home and see how the rest of your day shapes up!  I am lost, wondering who’s trying to reach me, and obsessed at how I will get my phone back before the day is over.  Crash you computer’s hard drive and all of a sudden nothing else in your life quite comes into focus (no it’s not mine by a friend’s).  As I look around me the different crisis are already beyond comprehension and I haven’t even begun to see the greater world.
 
We guard our possessions as if our life depends on them.  We also hold onto the advice of what to do when confronted by a mugger.  Simply put, life takes precedence over whatever is on our person.  Survival is the name of the game!  Live in the present, which often means dealing with the moment just past.  Don’t let go of your anger, do something with it.  Use what life gives you.  You are the only one truly on “your” side.
 
If the underlying premise to these statements is true, what now?  Is life ultimately more important that our values?  Is survival the ultimate goal?  Is living to fight another day the only “thing” that is important.
 
While it is true that after a crisis metaphorically and physically “survivors will count themselves lucky to have a cow and a couple of sheep.  At least they'll have plenty of milk!  Whoever's left in the land will learn to make do with the simplest foods—curds, say, and honey.” (Isaiah 7.21, 22)  The question of “now” remains unanswered.
 
I suggest life holds something more, much more.  We are players on a great stage.  Our future depends on the now.  It is in the “now” where we live out the values most precious.  Life pivots on our “choice”.  The past isn’t relevant, it’s history.  The future is only in the moment.  Now?