Living in the Moment

It was in St Paul’s cathedral last year that I learnt something about myself: I’m scared of heights! Climbing the stairs to take in the view from the dome at the top I began to feel dizzy. Then, stepping out onto the balcony I wondered how on earth what we were doing was supposed to be fun. And, despite my best efforts to the contrary, my fear was obvious to my wife.

The classic advice, of course, is “don’t look down”. The poet Hugo Williams puts it this as, “Don’t look down, once / You look down you own / The fall in your heart”. If you’re scared of heights you know exactly what owning the fall in your heart feels like.

And it’s not only literal heights that can produce this feeling but looking down towards any end about which we’re apprehensive. Williams makes the connection between owning the fall from a height in your heart to owning the fall into the future in your heart: “Until you looked down / And saw your future there / In the dust and light / And suddenly were thrown / Into that pit where / Now you trot each night”. (The image of falling into “the dust and light” comes from imagining the fear one might feel as a trapeze artist in a circus.)

The analogy between looking down and looking into our future draws out a universal human experience: the fear of the future. Fear of the future is what tempted Israel to consult mediums and why the Lord prohibited it (Deut. 18:9-14). – Not just Israel, in fact, this passage feels remarkably contemporary.

Fear of the future is what led Israel to lean on Egypt for support throughout Isaiah rather than trusting the Lord. In Isaiah the people look down into their future and once they’d owned the fall in their heart they turned to Egypt – or really anywhere – for help.

The universality of this fear of the future – whether for Israel in the 2nd millennium B.C. or Hugo Williams in 1965 – is something against which no one is immune. The reality is: we just don’t know what the future holds.

The advice not to look down is a good one. In fact, Jesus gives a version of this advice in Matt. 6:34, “do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself”. If we look down into all our tomorrow’s and own all the troubles in heart at once then anxiety is a certainty.

If we don’t look down we have to look somewhere else. And if not down then up. When we look down, we do so, into the unknown troubles of another day. Troubles that – whether they come to pass or not – will be owned in our hearts already if we do. Instead, look up to the one who walks with us. Not one who gives us all the information about the future we might like, but the one we know is with us. This is living in the moment – in a good way. Not ignoring the future (the Scriptures call us to consider our latter end (Deut. 32:29)) but reminding ourselves that our latter end with Christ Jesus is bright.

Living in the moment is about letting Jesus take us by the hand through every moment of our days. So, don’t look down. Look up. Walk with Christ today. Then walk with Him tomorrow again. And the day after.

Live in the moment. Live in today with your gaze fixed on Christ.

Footnote: 1. Hugo Williams, Collected Poems (Faber and Faber, 2002), p. 3. 2. Williams, Collected Poems, p. 4.

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Benjamin Lucas trained at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and has an MA in Theology with the University of Wales. He is married to Emily and they have three children. He is the Associate Vicar at All Saints' Lindfield.

Views expressed in blogs published by the Latimer Trust are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Latimer Trust.