Be Here

As I sit here in a chair in my apartment, a cup of coffee next to me, storm clouds rolling in to cover Lancaster City, and a 7-hour shift looming over tomorrow’s calendar square, I am reminded to exist right here, right now.

In March, I sat at my desk at my parents’ house in Missouri with my laptop open to a school email informing students that we couldn’t return to campus. That was when I started sprinting forward. I ran toward the next few months. I ran toward life in Pennsylvania, even if in quarantine. I ran away, to anywhere else.

When I flew back up to Pennsylvania, I was running away from the pandemic—distracting myself, trying desperately to get to the future of post-pandemic life. I was living with a friend, but my mind was elsewhere. I wanted to work, to have coffee with friends, and to hug people.

Even now, my mind runs away from the present, forward to financial security and independence, to working the job(s) that I’m a full-time student for, to when the working I’m doing now has paid off. Not only that, but I often think backward to what normal was, to when church members could sit shoulder-to-shoulder in church pews, and when people could gather together to talk and hug and fellowship. Daily, I run as fast as I can and as far as I can. I put my head down and power through the days. What discontentment I have bred here! I forget that even just months ago, I prayed for this. For today.

I finished reading through the book of James right before I moved from my friend’s house to the apartment I’m in now. Chapter 4 says, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’”

No plans are sure to come to pass except those of God. All we can be sure of is right now, so let’s be faithful with what we know we have. In February, we could not have predicted March. Our plans were uprooted and rerouted. This isn’t what we had planned, but it’s what God had planned.

Living in light of eternity wouldn’t have us sprint away from today; it would have us be faithful with now. If we are to run the race with “endurance,” that includes the mundane tasks and the slow days. I would rather reach the end of my life with memories of long days of faithfully working and thanking God for his provision than having sprinted all my years and only being content at the end, if that.

Now, after I’ve parked my car in the parking garage before each work shift, I pray that I wouldn’t take my job for granted. I pray that I would work unto the Lord and be fully present in that place. I pray that I don’t waste relationships with coworkers or underestimate the value of a kind smile when people come in.
Now as I’m sitting in a comfy chair by the window, I thank God for my apartment. I tidy my room with care and clean dishes with the joy of someone who just months ago thought I wouldn’t have my own kitchen to make a mess in. I bake for the roommates I live with, and I sit and talk to them whenever they’re around, because they’re right in front of me, and what a waste it would be to not care for those relationships too.

All this is temporary, but even in the temporary, be faithful. Hold relationships with gentle hands and cultivate them now. Care for those you have been given to care for. Don’t run away and miss the people in front of you.
Wherever you live, whether it is permanent, or you are passing through—take care of it. Thank God for the space. Notice things about it and let them live in your memory. Be there.
Wherever you work, if it is long-term, or just for a season, thank God for that provision. Don’t waste the connections with coworkers you would not have known otherwise. Work with patience and humility, without grumbling and without boasting. Thank God for hands that can work and a mind that can function through working hours.

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Col. 3:23). Work like your work was given to you by God, because it was. Take care of your home like God gave it to you as a gift, because he did. Love your neighbors like God told you to, because he did, in those exact words.

Be here, now.