Rethinking NOW

(This one is shorter!)

As I shared a while back in a longer article, I love the heuristic of acronyms. I see language as a gift to summon meaning far beyond the page (or screen), bridging our two ways of paying attention to the world. Handled rightly, words both do work and dance. This morning, I came across an acronym I had written in my journal recently. There in a moment of morning assessment in which I employed both hemispheres, I had created this acronym for the word NOW:

Notwithstanding the

Odyssey of

Wandering

Often we associate “faith” with the timing of “now,” and well we should. Faith is a “right now” concept in that it is alive, not abstracted. But sometimes (and I have seen the wreckage) we assume that it’s a NOW--once and for all--“fix” that suddenly bursts forth in our circumstances and we are disappointed when our “now” is not bursty! (The cross was actually the once and for all, but the rollout of the cataclysmic shift Jesus effected is more like a “gentle participatory tidal wave” that redesigns whole inner landscapes, one region at a time making no waste.)

Perhaps the most difficult NOW to engage with is the post-disappointment moment--where we feel “we could have done so much better” if not for (fill in the blank—there is always an “if not for.”) Thwarted again, just when we mounted up to ride our faith into the new horizon: “This time, I was going to break all the way through!” I have learned in decades of dealing with my own such high horses to dismount quickly. I have come to understand that God even shows up in my “odysseys of wandering,” ready and willing to create His NOW there. He doesn’t need my artificial creation of a God-moment in the flesh—He is actually always already “there”—and whenever I realize that, I just arrived at NOW! Now is indeed “notwithstanding” my “odyssey of wandering.” It is right in the midst of it when I simply let go of my heroics and re-engage my own humanity in the light of God’s view.

I summoned the metaphor of “high horses” above, along with the accompanying suggested remedy of dismounting. But to rightly “get off my high horse” in God is not to stop riding and return to the stable. Getting off my high horse is necessary because instead of high horses, I actually do have some “wild horses” to be ridden (U2’s song title question always strikes deep to me.) I was made for the odyssey and so were you. And there are for us wild horses out there to be ridden—adventures of living open and free to be had. Our insecurity (the voice of, “now I will have proved myself”) makes us seek to tame those horses into respectability, but the longer I live the more I RESPECT those who have gone for the wild ride and taken tumbles only to keep galloping toward the beauty. Let your faith be NOW: Notwithstanding your odyssey of wandering, no matter how many times you fell. Wild horses stand waiting. Open-hearted optimism is the real prize.

“Finally arriving” is behind you—it happened at the cross in Him—you can ride forward in your journey without the need to prove. You can celebrate the God who FILLS all things with Himself. NOW need not be PRESSURE…it can instead be PRESENCE. God is in your NOW, notwithstanding anything.