A Gift To Your Future Self

The world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.

Bending low to gather the seemingly hundreds of grape-sized tomatoes from my favorite, impossible-to-find variety (‘Matt’s Wild Cherry’), I thought back to our unseasonably cold spring and all of the plant pampering I undertook in a desperate bid to keep these now unruly, prolific plants alive.

Thank you, past Julie! Current Julie appreciates your (grumbling) dedication to hauling trays of seedlings in and out of the house for weeks on end so they could bask in the sun but be protected from nighttime temps. And future Julie is going to be blissed out when she gets to eat bruschetta made from these beauties long into the winter months!

I rolled my eyes at my ridiculous internal dialogue, even as I recognized the truth of it. I did appreciate my above-and-beyond efforts to keep these plants alive, and I was going to love having garden tomatoes and basil in my bruschetta mix when snow blanketed the ground. I was reaping the reward of my past gardening faithfulness.

But that’s not always the case. How often do we seek temporary pleasure or convenience at the expense of our future self? How often do we chase temporal achievements and possessions that will fade away over that which has eternal value and is pleasing to God?

These are uncomfortable, convicting questions, putting us in direct conflict with cultural and societal norms. However, delayed gratification and intentionality in what we pursue are essential parts of our faith journey that build both grit and gratitude. If we live to please only our current self and pursue the fool’s gold our culture deems valuable, we rob our future self and live lives that miss the most important, eternal points.

Julie

Today’s Act of Gratitude

Commit to a habit your future self will thank you for, and prayerfully recalibrate a short- and long-term goal to align with God’s plans, not society’s.