Isaiah 5:1-7, Ps.80:1-2, 8-18, Hebrews 11:29—12:2, Luke 12:49-56

In today’s gospel, Jesus tells us we don’t “know how to interpret the present time.” Here it is 2000 years later, and we still struggle with recognizing what is right before us. We spend so much time and energy fretting about the past, what has been done to us, what we have done to others, what we have missed doing when the opportunity presented itself, that the present becomes the past before we are even aware of it. The future captures our attention and derails us in a similar way. While the future is unknown, we spend countless hours anxiously worrying about what could happen, what might happen, and how we could cope if it did. Trying to plan and be prepared for every eventuality exhausts us and prevents our paying attention to what is happening now, this present time.

God is present in this present time, right here, right now, waiting for us to wake up, to be aware of the divine Presence in our midst. “I AM,” God’s name for Godself (Ex.3:14), is in the present tense—that should give us a clue about how important the present time is. Whatever is going on in our lives today is meant for our growth and development in Love. Some years ago, Richard Rohr wrote a whole book, Everything Belongs, on that premise. (If you haven’t read it, I urge you to—it was life-changing for me.) He has followed that with one called The Naked Now. If we truly want to know the Holy One, “to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life” as our collect prays, we need to strip away all the trappings that we allow to distract us from the present time, to accept “what is” as the Beloved’s blessing. Depending on how clogged our attention is, we may well need to pray for God’s refining fire of Love to burn away our dross that claims our attention, the fire that brings light into our darkness, that warms us when our hearts are cold.

Now is the time to come into the present time. Let go of anything that holds you back.