THE LANDSCAPE OF TOMORROW

The New Year has begun, and inevitably we will all be bombarded with an array of voices either trying to convince us that this year their resolutions will stick – or that resolutions never work and we should just stop making them in the first place.

Personally, I think that any opportunity to pause and take stock of life is a good one. The opportunity to consider where you’ve been, and what might lie ahead, is exciting. One of the beautiful things about the future is that it has not yet happened – and to me that is exhilarating. What wonders lie ahead that I would never before have thought about? What possibilities or opportunities are there for me this year? What obstacles might need to be overcome and, even if I fall over a few times, what new mysteries might I learn about myself, the world, God? 

I understand that some people see the future a little differently though. For some, it comes with a sense of overwhelm and panic. For others – and this includes many who hold to the Christian faith – it is fixed and predetermined. When I think about this my mind always drifts back to the Garden of Eden, and God’s curious decision to allow the adama to work the land and name the animals. The interesting thing here is that the story seems to be about a work that is perfectly unfinished – one that still requires cultivating. 

In Genesis 2:15 it says that: “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” and again in verse 19 it says that “[God] brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name” – what a curious thing that God might create a world so perfectly unfinished that he would want humans to be part the process of creating, working and renewing.

It would seem that we weren’t simply placed in a world where everything would work according to a clockwork plan –instead we were placed into a world that we were invited to help shape. I think the same is true today. This is what is so remarkable about life, particularly a life of faith – that we get to cultivate the soil of tomorrow’s world. We get not just to live in the world God created, but we get to continue the creative process with God. 

As you think about the future I want to encourage you that the only thing we can know for sure, is that it’s not a passive reality. What I mean by this is that the future isn’t something that simply happens to us, it is something that we shape with every choice we make. You are part of crafting what tomorrow looks like. 

Sure, we can’t control everything. Sometimes things happen that we have no choice in and these events can dramatically influence the trajectory of our lives. The loss of a loved one, a redundancy, an unexpected diagnosis. But whilst these things often seem beyond our control – and they certainly impact the way the future looks – we still have the capacity to shape our future. We might not be able to control much but we can still look around and decide how we will respond to it – what kind of presence we will bring and what kind of experience others will have of us. 

So as you step into this New Year, and embrace the natural opportunities to think about what lies ahead, why not stop and acknowledge that the future – whilst unknown and at times unpredictable – is dramatically shaped by the choices you make. God is present, and with you, but continually invites you to name the world in which you find yourself.

How are you going to shape the future?