The life in front of you

We spend so much time preparing for what’s next that we can miss what God has already placed in our hands.

There is a peculiar habit many of us acquire somewhere in adulthood: we begin living slightly ahead of ourselves. The present remains where our bodies happen to be, but much of our attention is invested elsewhere—in the promotion we are working towards, the business we hope to build, the house we would like to own, the relationship we want to improve, the financial position we are trying to reach, the version of ourselves we are still becoming. None of these ambitions is necessarily wrong. Some are responsible, some admirable and some may represent precisely the work God has given us to do. Yet almost imperceptibly, anticipation can become a way of life. Today becomes preparation for tomorrow, and tomorrow, when it arrives, quickly becomes preparation for whatever follows it.

Men can be particularly susceptible to this. We are often encouraged to think in terms of progress: build something, provide something, improve something, achieve something. We measure distance travelled and distance still to go. At work there is another target, another quarter, another opportunity. At home there may be a mortgage to pay, children to prepare for adulthood, repairs to make and plans for the future. Even our personal lives can become projects. We want to become fitter, wiser, more disciplined, more financially secure, more spiritually mature. There is almost always a next version of life waiting somewhere beyond the present one. The danger is not ambition itself. A life without aspiration can become as diminished as one consumed by it. Scripture hardly presents passivity as a virtue. We are told to work diligently, steward what we have been given, provide for those entrusted to us and use our gifts faithfully. Christianity is not an invitation to sit beneath a tree admiring the present while neglecting tomorrow.

The problem comes when tomorrow acquires such importance that today is reduced to a waiting room. We tell ourselves that life will settle down after this particularly demanding season. We will spend more time with the children when work becomes less intense. We will reconnect with friends when the diary opens up. We will take better care of ourselves after the deadline. We will serve, give, travel, rest, write, pray or simply breathe when circumstances become more accommodating. We will be more present with our wives when this problem has been solved, more attentive to our parents when this project is finished, more available to the people around us when we have finally reached the place towards which we have been working. The difficulty is that life has a habit of refusing to become accommodating.

One demanding season gives way to another. The promotion arrives and brings greater responsibility. The business grows and requires more attention rather than less. The children move from one stage of dependence to another. The mortgage is paid down and some other financial concern takes its place. The diary that was supposed to clear simply acquires different appointments. We reach the destination we once imagined would allow us to relax and discover, sometimes within days, another horizon forming in the distance. There is always something next, and this is not merely a problem of time management. It is a problem of attention. Attention may be one of the most consequential forms of stewardship we possess.

We tend to think of stewardship in terms of money, possessions or ability, but a man’s attention is finite too. Whatever repeatedly receives it eventually begins to shape him. A man can be physically present at dinner while mentally remaining in the office. He can hear his child speaking without really listening. He can sit beside the woman he loves while scrolling through a world populated by people he barely knows. He can attend church while mentally organising Monday morning. He can pray while simultaneously rehearsing the problem he has already decided he must solve himself. None of this usually looks catastrophic, which is precisely what makes it dangerous. Lives are rarely missed all at once; they are missed in increments—a conversation half-heard, a dinner hurried through, a friend we intended to call, a father whose stories we assumed we would have time to ask about later, a child who stopped asking us to play because the answer was too often “in a minute”, a wife who gradually became accustomed to competing with a telephone for our attention, a morning whose beauty we never noticed because our thoughts had already arrived at the afternoon.

Then, occasionally, something interrupts us. A photograph appears from five years earlier and we are startled by how young everyone looks. A child leaves home. A parent becomes ill. A friendship fades. A colleague retires after decades spent climbing a ladder and seems strangely unsure what to do when there are no more rungs. We discover that a season we had regarded as temporary was, in fact, our life. The writer of Ecclesiastes understood something of this tension. The book is often remembered for its darker observations about the fleeting nature of human endeavour, but woven through it is a remarkably practical insistence that ordinary gifts are to be received while they are available: eat your food with gladness, enjoy life with the person you love, find satisfaction in your work, receive the days God gives you. The message is not that work, achievement or planning are meaningless, but that they become distorted when we ask them to provide a permanence they cannot give.

Jesus makes the point differently in the Sermon on the Mount. “Do not worry about tomorrow,” he says, “for tomorrow will worry about itself.” The words are familiar enough to lose their force. They are sometimes interpreted as a pleasant encouragement to relax, but Jesus is not advocating irresponsibility. His listeners lived in a world in which tomorrow’s food could be a genuine concern. The invitation is more radical: refuse to allow an imagined future to consume the life God is actually giving you today. That is considerably harder than it sounds, because planning creates the reassuring sensation that we are exercising control. The future can be organised into targets, budgets, calendars and strategies. The present is less cooperative. It contains interruptions, people, inconvenience and responsibilities that cannot always be optimised. It asks us to respond to what is actually happening rather than what we hoped would happen. For men accustomed to solving problems and moving towards objectives, the ordinary present can sometimes feel frustratingly unproductive.

Yet much of what matters most in a life cannot be measured by conventional ideas of productivity. There is no obvious return on investment from sitting for an extra twenty minutes over breakfast with someone you love. Nobody issues a quarterly report showing the value created by calling an old friend. Listening patiently to a teenager tell a story that could have been told in one-third of the time will not improve the day’s efficiency. Neither will taking a walk without headphones, lingering after dinner, helping a neighbour, sitting beside somebody who is grieving or allowing prayer to occupy time that could have been used to clear another six emails. And yet, when men look back over their lives, these are rarely the things they wish they had done less.

The tension is particularly sharp for those of us who understand our work as meaningful. If what we are building genuinely matters, sacrifice can always be justified. There is one more client who needs us, one more person we could help, one more opportunity that might not come again. Christian men can add spiritual language to the argument. We are providing for our families. We are stewarding an opportunity. We are building something that could serve others. We are using the gifts God has given us. All of those things may be true. They may also be the stories we tell ourselves because achievement is easier to measure than presence.

A man’s family may benefit from what his work provides while still paying a price for what his work takes from him. His children may appreciate the opportunities he creates and still wish he had looked up more often. A wife can be proud of what her husband is building while quietly missing the man who is building it. There is no universal formula for resolving those tensions, and simplistic instructions about “work-life balance” tend to collapse under the weight of actual life. Some seasons genuinely require unusual effort. Emergencies happen. Businesses demand attention. Families make sacrifices together for things they believe are worthwhile. The question is not whether life is perfectly balanced; it never will be. The better question is whether the people and responsibilities immediately before us are consistently receiving what only we can give them.

That question can be uncomfortable because it requires us to distinguish between what is urgent and what is important. Urgency is loud. It sends notifications, schedules meetings and imposes deadlines. Importance is often remarkably quiet. A marriage rarely sends a calendar invitation announcing that it needs attention. Children do not normally explain that a particular Tuesday evening will become one of their lasting memories. Friendships seldom collapse because of one dramatic act of neglect; they thin through repeated absence. Our relationship with God can do something similar, becoming functional and hurried while we remain busy doing things we have convinced ourselves are important. The life in front of us is therefore not merely whatever happens to occupy today’s diary. It is the collection of people, responsibilities, opportunities and ordinary gifts that God has entrusted to us now.

That word—entrusted—changes the way we see them. Stewardship is usually associated with things we possess, but perhaps the people and moments in our lives are better understood as things we have been given for a time. Children are small for a time. Parents are available for a time. Health is enjoyed for a time. Certain friendships belong particularly to a season. Houses fill with people and later become quiet. Careers open doors and eventually end. Even the strength with which we approach life in middle age is not something we are promised indefinitely. Recognising this need not make us morbid; it can make us attentive. There is a difference between living as though everything is about to disappear and living with the awareness that nothing should be taken entirely for granted. The first produces anxiety. The second can produce gratitude.

Gratitude has an unusual effect on ambition because it allows us to desire more without despising what we already have. A man can want to grow his business while remaining thankful for today’s work. He can pursue a larger house without behaving as though the kitchen table around which his family currently gathers is merely temporary furniture in an inferior life. He can hope for marriage while refusing to treat singleness as an empty corridor leading towards real adulthood. He can pray for children while still receiving the life available to him now. He can work towards financial freedom without postponing generosity until he feels wealthy. Perhaps one of the clearest signs that ambition has become disordered is when we are no longer able to enjoy anything that has already arrived.

Yesterday’s prayer can become today’s expectation with remarkable speed. The job we once desperately wanted becomes the job we complain about on Monday morning. The home we prayed to afford becomes too small. The relationship we once hoped for becomes familiar enough to neglect. The opportunities we once asked God to provide become obligations we resent. We are remarkably capable of converting blessings into background scenery. The antidote is not guilt. Guilt is rarely a sustainable way to become more present. Nor is the answer to abandon ambition, delete the calendar and pretend that responsible adults have no need to think about next year. The challenge is much more ordinary: to learn to notice what is already here.

For some men, that may begin with a simple question: What has God actually placed in my hands today? Not next year, not after the promotion, not when the children are older or the bank balance healthier. Today. There will be work to do, certainly. There may be difficult decisions, deadlines and responsibilities that cannot be ignored. But there may also be a wife who deserves to be listened to without a screen nearby, a child who wants ten minutes that cannot be rescheduled for next year, a friend whose unusually quiet message deserves a telephone call rather than a thumbs-up, a parent whose familiar story is worth hearing one more time, a body that needs rest or a prayer that needs enough silence around it to become honest.

The practical implications are not complicated, which is perhaps why they are so easy to overlook. Put the telephone somewhere else during dinner. Protect an evening that work is not permitted to consume. Ask the second question when a friend says he is fine. Walk slowly enough to notice where you are. Occasionally allow something enjoyable to exist without photographing it, posting it or converting it into content. Say thank you while the person is still there to hear it. Tell people what they mean to you before circumstances force the conversation. And, when necessary, allow another man to challenge the story you are telling yourself about why you are so busy.

Brotherhood has a role here too. Good friends do more than encourage our ambitions; sometimes they remind us what our ambitions are costing. A man who knows us well may recognise that we have not mentioned our marriage without complaining for six months, that every conversation eventually returns to work, or that the goals we once said were for our family now routinely prevent us from being with them. We need men who will celebrate what we are building but who care enough about us to ask whether we are still becoming someone worth being when it is built.

There is an irony in all of this. Many of the futures we work so hard to create are motivated by a desire to enjoy precisely the things already available to us. We want financial security so that we can have more freedom with our time. We want professional success so that our families can enjoy a good life. We want the larger house because we imagine people gathered around the table. We dream of retirement because we picture unhurried mornings, long conversations, travel, friendship and the freedom to notice things. Perhaps we should not wait until retirement to practise being alive.

The Gospels repeatedly show Jesus refusing to live at the pace other people attempt to impose upon him. He has a mission of extraordinary consequence and only a short public ministry in which to accomplish it, yet he allows himself to be interrupted. He stops for people others would have passed. He eats at tables. He notices individuals in crowds. He withdraws to pray. He sleeps. He attends a wedding. Children who could contribute nothing to his apparent objectives receive his attention. Even on the way to do something important, he remains available to the person immediately before him. There is no laziness in this. Jesus is purposeful without being hurried, attentive without losing direction. He knows where he is going and therefore does not have to treat every moment as an obstacle between himself and his destination.

Perhaps that is part of what it means to live faithfully too. We should make plans. We should build things worth building. We should work hard, save money, develop our gifts, set goals and prepare wisely for whatever future God allows us to see. But none of those things gives us permission to regard the present as expendable. The future matters, but it does not belong to us yet. Today does, and at some point each of us will experience an ordinary moment for the last time without knowing it.

There will be a final school run, a final conversation with a parent, a final evening in a particular home, a final time a child asks to be carried, a final unremarkable coffee with a friend before circumstances change. We cannot identify those moments in advance, and perhaps it is merciful that we cannot. Life would become unbearable if every ordinary experience arrived carrying the weight of its eventual ending. But we can learn to receive ordinary things before their absence teaches us their value.

Perhaps the life we keep waiting to begin is not waiting at all. Perhaps much of it is already here: in the work worth doing, the people sitting across from us, the prayers we can pray today, the table around which we gather, the responsibilities that belong uniquely to this season and the small opportunities for faithfulness that will never appear on anybody’s list of achievements. There will always be another horizon and there will always be something next. But God is not only waiting for us there. He is here, too—and so is our life.