And Then We'll Get Ice Cream.

When I was a child, I hated going to the doctor. Every visit meant getting a shot or blood drawn, usually both. I developed a fear of shots that was a bit more acute than average and once even got very agitated at one visit. My mom would always promise my brother and I that we could go for ice cream afterward. Actually, he got ice cream and I'd get a bag of Oreos.

Of course, she did this to keep us looking forward to something, to keep us in line and focused on a reward rather than the visit. She and the nurses would sometimes say, "Relax, it will all be over in just a minute."

And it was true. Even tetanus shots didn't really bother me afterward. No shot or blood withdrawal kept hurting for more than a few seconds after the needle was taken out. To be honest, even the needle itself wasn't (usually) that terrible. I had just made it up in my mind that it was.

This morning, it was time to get the oil changed on my car. Already needing some other things, I decided to take it to Wal-Mart and arrived before they had opened the entrance into the Car Maintenance Dept., so I had to walk around the building and into the main entrance. It was pretty cold and a little windy out, and I got about 50 yards from the gate when I thought, "In less than a minute, this cold won't matter. I'll be inside where it's nice and warm and I'll forget all about this."

And yet for the important things in life, we have such a hard time keeping this perspective. That person going ten miles under the speed limit is annoying, but will they really make that big a difference in your day? (Just a thought: consider the difference in drive time going 55 vs. 65 over the course of 30 miles. It's only five minutes and two seconds.) Will the argument you had with someone you work with matter down the road? Will someone insulting you matter even tomorrow?

If we had that perspective on things, we could live much happier lives. Think of how much lower our stress would be if all the petty annoyances were removed from it, or even most of them. And yet, we wouldn't be where God wants us to be. God wants us to consider everything with the perspective that something greater awaits us, that our trials, no matter how brutal and daunting they seem, are temporary, even if they last the rest of our lives. There is heaven awaiting us, eternity with God in all His limitless glory...and we get angry that the traffic light turned yellow just before we could have gone through it.

I am as guilty as anyone of this. Last night, I went to a birthday party for a friend. Most of my friends were there, yet for some reason, I felt ignored by almost everyone. It seemed that they were always engaged in conversation with each other and rarely with me, at least not for more than 30 seconds at a time. I left early, citing exhaustion (which was true and valid considering my week), but secretly wondering whether I really fit in with the group.

I know it's a tactic of the devil to point out things like this to me (next topic will be about war), but at the same time, I'll admit for a part of today, I lost focus on the eternal. I kept thinking how much it mattered to me that I was accepted and liked by my friends.

To be sure, friends have a place, not only in helping us feel loved, but in sharpening us as well. What I was doing, though, was letting them matter more than God. I let the present matter more than my future...my assured future.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons it is so easy to lose sight of the future. It's not just that we can't see it and have to accept it on faith, though that certainly adds to the problem, it's that we don't act like it's assured. I'm not sure we really believe it.

If I fail to write another word in any of my books or if I fail to send them to a publisher or agent, I'll never get published. God knows my future, but He also decreed the law of sowing and reaping. My future as an author is not assured unless I do something. Likewise, if I fail to show warmth and trustworthiness to those that cross my path, my social future is not assured.

My future in heaven, however, is assured no matter what I do. (This doesn't give me the right to do as I please, as Paul discusses in Romans 6, but that's for a different message.) I need not do anything, I can not do anything, to earn this. There is nothing that I can pay God back with, no deed I've done that He owes me for, nothing I can threaten Him with if He doesn't give in to me. There is only a promise He made to me in love: a promise that if I would believe in what Jesus did for me, He forgive me for all the sins I've committed (and continue to commit); that He would never leave me, no matter how hard life gets; that after life here ends, He would take me to heaven...and then we'll get ice cream.