Ready for the Future

Screenshot from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Jetson

One of the cartoons I enjoyed watching as a child was the futuristic Jetsons. As a teen, I was a big Star Trek fan. As an adult, the attraction of distracting entertainment remains in far-off eras ahead.

There’s always been something attractive of the potential of the future, in what calls us in, awakes our imaginations, and inspires us to help create that idyllic setting. And, if the futuristic setting is not ideal, to (hopefully) encourage us to act accordingly to avoid those errors.

So… what happens when we realise that the future is not far off, but is in fact - now?

This comes to mind as the fictional George Jetson (created in the 1960s) is alleged to have been born mid-2022. Some sixty years ago, the space-age reality for this cartoon family circa 2022 was simultaneously far-fetched and feasible.

Yet here we are: Happy birthday George! Yet… this is not the world we thought you would be born into.

Fictional George’s birthday can be helpful for us to reflect on our own perceptions of time, of movement, of progress, and of expectation. We owe it to ourselves to consider the realities of today; being informed by our past but not stuck there. Accepting the truth of today, while aspiring for a better tomorrow.

If we allow ourselves to be limited to a present day that is dependent only on the expectations of years ago, we are limiting ourselves. And, that limitation today will be compounded as it restricts the potential growth for tomorrow.

The future, is here. Because we are always moving forward; we cannot move back into history. And God wants us to move forward, it’s why God’s majesty is continuously and continually opening before us, revealing to us the gorgeousness of now.

The promise of the future is not of our expectation s of this world; the promise of tomorrow comes in the hope of the resurrection: a hope we would never want to limit by our past.

And thus: we live in the now; and we are living in the future. For when we live in faith, we are embracing the potential and possibility of all that is to come. In faith, we are declaring to God, and to each other, that we are ready for the future.