Reading can develop into an odd habit.  I set page-per-day/session goals and compile lists of books that I should read.  And the temptation arises to read for the sake of simply being able to know and say that I read.  But what does it matter how quickly I read if pages are remembered as a blur-  as a passings-by of that which was only potentially inspiring and merely theoretically informing?  I have been learning to take however much time it takes to truly read.  If I zone out and find that I've scanned the last page, then it is back to the beginning of the page for me.  I am not ashamed of reading slowly, or progressing steadily.  Is there shame in education, in patience, in follow-through?  Ha! how foolish it would be to exert a shallow mentality, to labor my time, for such a thin, useless study- empty credentials and a hollow sense of accomplishment!

 What I see in myself, and in others, is a tragic anxiety, manifesting itself in regrettable compromises. For lack of spouse we lust; for lack of wealth we spend frivilously; for lack of fitness we satisfy all gluttony and sloth; for lack of perfect resources we curse; for lack of better peers we pride in ourselves... we sin in acting out our anxiety, a quiet panic, a worrying sin. Because we don't have things that may well be on their way, but have not arrived, we allow ourselves to believe that they do not actually exist. The situation is a misunderstanding of reality; Jesus explains that worrying about our future does make time for us, as we fantasize it will, but instead wastes the very real hours we spend worrying.

I convince myself that my future wife does not exist, simply because I am not yet married to her and couldn't tell you who she is. But am I so authoritative? Do the dealings of life hinge on my knowledge of them? Surely, if I come to marry a woman who will be, at the youngest, 20 years younger than me, then she is already somewhere on the earth, walking around, living her life, being her very real self! That is to say, if she has already been born, then she is definately alive and present! She is, in fact, much more real than the fantastic lover I lust over, or the romance I fantasize between myself and someone I have seen. So I give precedence to the woman whom I know I will never romance (realistically, given the Direction my life is going), and set up suffering for my existing, future wife, who is currently being cheated what will become her due. Jesus' revelation that to lust is to commit adultery in one's heart, gives insight into the real weight of unrealized desires.

Why are we so hesitant to believe in the future? Is it because the present is all that we have ever known? Let me continue to draw from my personal experience... I am well-experienced in the future, and without excuse to doubt it. When God drew me to salvation, it was a good beyond my imagination. So then, I should be able to at least understand the future, as a Christian, enough to trust it. Looking back, I see that my life was quite miserable before I was drawn to Christ; it was spent trying to forget the fact that I must ultimately die. Yet, having recieved Christ in the end, my life experience has been more than adequate, and I have quite survived that dark season of lacking. So, my today is adaquete as well, though I may not have the things that I need*. The difference between my life now, and my life before Christ, however, is that I should have been in panic before I knew the salvation of Christ, because it is an issue of Life and Death, whereas, now that I do know my Christ, I should be all the more patient, because I know that God Himself is my caretaker.

We have so far to go, which can be discouraging. But, as Christians, we know that we will be taken so far, which can be encouraging. Now we struggle with whether or not we have our needs met for this earthly life, but we must grow in dependence on our enduring lives, which either place us in Heaven or in Hell. I don't say this because there is work to do to secure our place in Heaven (that work belongs to Christ), but because there is work to do in helping others embrace that given security. As they say, "The one thing you can't do in Heaven is share Christ." This sort of devotion to the so-called "afterlife," however, requires a deep belief in that which has not yet arrived; it requires patience.

Matthew 5:27-28; 6:19-21, 25-27, Romans 8:28-32, 1 Corinthians 7:29-30, Jeremiah 29:10-14, Revelation 22:12-13, 20-21

*A funny word, "need"