The Hope And Promise Found In Today

​I sat up high, looking down on this wonderful group of high school graduates. And as I sat and listened to various speakers and leaders speak to the hope and promise ahead, I wandered back to my own high school graduation - now many decades behind me - and I wondered - did I feel hope and promise?

Did I?

And more importantly, has my life turned out better or worse than the things I'd hoped for and the things I felt promised to me by that next stage in life?

I was about to answer myself - and there WAS an answer - when I stopped myself. I stopped myself and reminded myself of one of the greater lessons I've learned since walking off the stage of my own graduation day.

Hope and promise are often great fuel for finding peace in life; they are rarely as helpful in dictating or predicting direction.

No matter how much hope and promise one of those graduates was feeling down below me, one thing I was sure of, they really have no idea as to the direction life is about to carry them.

And in fairness, high school didn't require them to think much about direction.

There were counselors helping them pick their classes. Pick them hopefully in line with some loose idea of what they want to be when they grow up.

There were tests to make sure their grades stayed fearfully on track in those classes.

Bells and whistles sounded to make sure they paraded in a timely manner to and from those classes.

Many had parents offering various levels of direction and control outside of those classes.

But now:

Life.

And one of the riskiest beliefs one can have leaving high school is to believe life will remain quite so predictable. Because all of the hope and promise in the world doesn't lend an ounce to predictability.

High school can trick you into believing that you have an idea what is next. And then life comes along, and often abruptly and repeatedly says, you really have no idea.

It's then that you come to know that hope and promise isn't found in the future as much as it is found in the right here and now. I thought about that sitting up there, reflecting down upon those graduates, just how much high school is pointing young people to futures who have so little idea how to handle the here and now.

And I thought about me. How maybe in some ways I never broke free from that model. The model of looking toward tomorrow for some hints of that hope and promise to help me deal with the lack of such in the here and now.

Surely it is on its way?

Until you reach that day when you realize - it's not coming. It never was. And that you and you alone are responsible for finding and creating your own sources of hope and promise in life.

You are responsible for doing so in a way that will help you feel today what you were once hoping would arrive tomorrow.

For me, that has ultimately proved to be God in my life.

When I find myself asking, has life turned out better or worse than I thought it would, it is God who asks me back - what is the value of declaring better or worse on yesterday to the creation of hope and promise in today?

It is God who has declared upon my life that he is hope, he is promise, and he is NOW.

For it has been God, as I have followed every unpredictable turn in life - many of which led me far from him - who has remained by my side, waiting to answer when I fall into screaming at the top of my lungs, where on earth is this hope and this promise...?!?!

It is God who has remained by my side, waiting to answer:

I am right here.

I have no idea what tomorrow will bring.

But I am absolutely sure where I can find God today.

Hope.

Promise.