I miss my son – a year ago still feels like only last week with all that is still raw.

The promises of the future are rooted in the past. But what about the present?

What do I have for today to encourage my soul and do for my family in the land of the living? What about the next lap around the track of grief for which seems more daunting in some says than last year?

I am reminded today that the next lap is still in that bucket of time of “don’t worry about tomorrow, I have it, and I have the weight of today” – very loose translation of Jesus speaking into my sorrow in Matthew 7 :-).

So today. I have God.

Today I have all that God grants in his goodness in order to taste and see him as bigger and more loving than I even used to think.

Yes, yesterday – I had Jackson in Kenya with our loved ones by Thompson Falls – and the cross.

Tomorrow I get this nightmare undone somehow and receive more than Jackson back from his grave – and behold the glory of my God for which we were made.

Today, Paul says I have MORE. More? Yes, he says I certainly have the realities of the past guaranteeing the future – but even more than that in the NOW that I live, I have God now…

That is what my soul gets – and for my family.

What we believe about the future has an impact on our present whether for good or for bad.

It has been said, two people were given a job for twelve months of repetitive, menial, tedious labor with their hands. One person was told at the start they would receive $22,000 at the end of the year. The other was told they would receive $1,000,000. One person slugged it out every day in work and the other person did the same work but was whistling and focused. Same job, same work, same hours, same products produced – but different present. It was a different present because what they believed about the future transformed the present.

Paul’s logic is what hits me today: the past of Christ drying for me his enemy is what guarantees he will save me his friend to the uttermost. Having a valuable future of worth beyond anything money can buy transforms my present. I HAVE reconciliation with God my loving, good Father now.

So today, we have God. That is more – for the grief, for the beauty somehow in these painful ashes which I don’t like…