By Trish Donohue

It’s time for a little game.  Let’s divide everybody into two groups: the worriers and the non-worriers.  Life is not that simple, I know, but general categories can be helpful at times.  So we have our two teams.  Places everyone.

On one side we have the worriers.  Worriers do not like to be called worriers; they like to be called thinkers.  I personally much prefer that title.  We consider ourselves thoughtful people who do not have our eyes stuck on the moment, but look circumspectly into the future and see the big picture.  We possess a gift for considering the implications of things, weighing their effect, and sharing our contemplations free of charge. 

For instance, if we have a child who lives with his finger up his nose, we “thinkers” will consider the long-range implications of this.  He will certainly never get a wife (no grandchildren for us), no one will hire him (he’ll be living in our basement), and his nose will become infected, fall off, and require our retirement fund for plastic surgery.  The short-sighted among us who say, “He’ll grow out of it in a month,” are stuck in the moment and unable to partake of our long-range perspective.  Their loss.

One of the members of the other team, the short-sighted non-worriers, had the gall to correct my long-range ponderings.  It happened to be my husband, who coincidentally, and irritatingly, is neither short-sighted nor stuck in the moment, but tends to trust God very well for the present and the future.  And since I’m knocked out of my fun little stereotyping anyway, I might as well get serious and share it with you (if, by chance, you happen to be a member of my team.)

He said that although I look into the future, I don’t look far enough into the future.

Hmmmm, interesting.  It’s a correction that speaks my language—I like that!  I think he dropped this little nugget of wisdom while brushing his teeth, and then walked out, leaving me and my toothbrush to ponder the accuracy of such a bold statement.

We decided he was right.  We worriers—I mean long-range thinkers—look far into the future.  We can clearly visualize things (usually negative things), or at least we think we can.  But we don’t look far enough to reach the end.  When we look that far, we see heaven, a place of incredible perspective.  We see a time when all the tiny details of this life will be swallowed up by the record of God’s perfect faithfulness.  We’ll then see that the promises of God were accomplished—that He did work all things for good to those who love Him, that He did uphold us with his righteous right hand, that He never did leave us or forsake us.  We’ll see that it didn’t matter if all our earthly dreams came true, or if there were some unexpected bumps on the road.  We won’t be evaluating life on the basis of ease and comfort, but on whether it magnified the glory of God. 

So, gaze on, worriers, keep looking ahead and imagining the future.  Just make sure you look far enough ahead, and imagine the real future.  It will make a huge difference.