Dr. Randy Carlson
Sometimes it feels like we rush through life. We just go from moment to moment and experience to experience without ever really appreciating that instant in time.
Some of you may remember the movie from 1993, Groundhog Day, that starred Bill Murray. It’s a fun movie about a TV reporter who goes to a small community to cover Groundhog Day for the station. He wakes up the next morning to find himself living the same day all over again. Early in the movie, Murray experiences retakes of the same day by doing foolish kinds of things. As the movie develops, he realizes how important that one day is to his life, and he starts to use it to do things differently with his life. By the end of the movie, he learns some valuable lessons about living in the moment.
We’d all like to go back from time-to-time and relive a moment, because we just rush through life. We can’t stop time, but as we look at the experiences of our life, most of us have specific moments that alter the course of our life.
We have moments in time where we make a decision, or something occurs in our life that changes the direction of our life. It could be a medical diagnosis, or a decision we make about education. It may be a spouse that says I no longer want to be married or any number of things that produces a significant moment.
It’s important to understand The Power of Now – this moment in time. Solomon says, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). And if we think about that verse, we realize everything in our life is going through God’s hands in some way. He is still ultimately in charge of this.
We’re all in different seasons in our lives. It’s important not to think of seasons, just in terms of age, but about the four seasons that we celebrate. Spring is a hope-filled time, a time of planting, renewal, and new growth. It’s a time of expectation, especially coming out of winter and looking to spring.
You might be in a springtime season in your life right now. Perhaps God is doing some new things. It’s a time to plant things and invest in things. When I think about practical things like our health or finances, it’s a season to make decisions for creating good habits because winter is coming around the corner.
Summer is an interesting time. Most of us are not farmers, but our farming community understands you care for and protect things, so they can grow in the summer season. You make sure things are watered. Summer is a lot of work. God gives us longer days in the summer, so we can work more.
A fall season in our lives is harvest time. We gather and store because winter is coming, and winter can be filled with difficult days.
Some of you may be in the winter season of your life. Perhaps you were hit with a storm you didn’t see coming. If you haven’t stored up from the spring, summer, and fall, you are not well-equipped to face the winter. That’s true spiritually, emotionally, and intentionally. That’s why it’s so important, as we talk about the power of now, to realize that whatever season you are in, you’re not always going to be in this season, the next season is coming.
We must take advantage of where we are today to make good choices, because your choices become your habits, and your habits become your character.
Think about the importance of this moment in time. You’ll never be here, in this moment again, with these same thoughts and experiences. Life is progressive and it continues into eternity. I pray the Lord will help you prepare in every season to meet the next one with His intentional love.
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