Once and For All

Now there’s a saying we use all the time but never think about! The Collins Dictionary says it means “for the last time, finally, completely, for good, positively, permanently, for ever, decisively, inexorably, conclusively, irrevocably, for all time, inescapably, with finality, beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

Just watch the news for a while and you’ll see the opposite of ‘once and for all’. You’ll live through every tragedy multiple times. It’s the media’s way to keep us tuned in. Spectacular, shocking, painful, emotional, disasters repeated ad infinitum. If it’s visual, it’ll go into the ‘news cycle’ and we’ll see it over and over and over again.

We can do the same thing to ourselves if we won’t stop the replays of our own disasters. Looking back on life and second-guessing yourself over and over is wasteful and painful. We feel bad about what we missed so we go back to it. And back to it. We live our mistakes over and over. It’s not like we made the mistake one time. Every time we go over it, we’ve made it again. We experience it again, feel the shame again.

Joe Montana ranks as one of the best quarterbacks to ever play in the NFL. One of his greatest strengths was his ability to forget the last play and the next play and execute the current play. That’s all he had influence over. That’s all he could affect. Approaching each play as a ‘once and for all’ opportunity, he won a national championship at Notre Dame, four Super Bowls and three Super Bowl MVP’s.

Going over and over a future event is worry. I’m not talking about practicing something to get good at it. I’m talking about rehearsing things in your mind you think are going to go badly. Like rehearsing a conversation with your mother-in-law. Or the conversation you’re going to have with your boss. Or the call you’re going to get from your doctor’s office about your pathology report. We live those moments multiple times in our heads and hearts…many of which never come to fruition. It’s called worry.

Our Lord had a clear word for us about the future. He said (in Matthew 6:34)

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”

And then Isaiah 43:18-19 (NIV) speaks to the past…

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”

So that leaves the present doesn’t it? Right now. The next ‘right thing’. The here and now. Today.

Will we live it fully? Deliberately? “Once and for all”?

Question: “Lord, will you help me focus on the ‘here and now’? We need your help to recognize every moment, every personal encounter, every interaction is ‘once and for all’. Please, please, please help us to recognize your Presence and live in it.