Doing the Work At Hand

"Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand." - Thomas Carlyle

I fear sometimes I let my visions of my future - at the least the future as I'd like it - get in the way of the things that need to be done right now.

The future is a wonderful place to dwell. It's a place of possibilities and ideas, a land where problems never bedevil, where the only issues that arise are which of the multitude of good things to do will you do to day, of all the things in life which are now not going well becoming grand.

It is, in a word, surreal.

The future contrasts badly with the present. The possibilities which potentially exist in the future are seen as wisps in the present. What exists in the present is too often what we have to do: prosaic, common, often frankly boring. If the future is a vista of multiple possibilities, the present is often a single possibility boringly executed over repeated days and years.

But the part that we forget, I suppose, is that in fact the future is the present, veiled in mists.

The future only comes to us through the present. That which we build now in the present will become our future. Yes, we should visualize our future and see that we are moving in those directions, but at the same time we probably need to do the work that it is put in front of us now. Because the work placed in front of us now can often lead to futures that we do not or cannot expect - simply because the present which leads to them is not contemplated by us now.

A simple, personal example: by choosing to join The Firm, I eventually did what was in front of me - and ended up in New Home. Certainly not the future I would have visualized for myself 7 years ago, but by doing what was in front of me - one step at a time - here we landed.

"God never gives guidance for two steps at a time. I must take one step, and then I get light for the next. This keeps the heart in abiding dependence upon God." - C. H. Mackintosh

If our futures are in God's hands - which they are - and only He sees the totality of time - which He does - then I must believe that this thing put in front of me at this time is the thing which I am expected to accomplish right now to lead to a future which perhaps I can only see hints of but which God sees fully.

The bottom line (mostly for myself) is not to let the work which can be done - must be done - now confuse with any future which may come. Mine is to do what needs doing at hand; by doing the work, the path will resolve itself.