Editing the Future

The other day I tried to use an old jump-drive that I found in my desk. My laptop opened the drive and indicated that its storage capacity was already maxed out. The image above shows the files it contains. Notice that the highlighted file was last modified December 29, 2103. It's been a while since I studied math, but I'm pretty sure this date is more than 92 years into the future. 

Beyond the frustration with my inability to remove these extraneous files to make room for today's important documents and pictures, I am curious about what it's like to edit the future. Most people spend a lot of time and energy trying to edit their past, and some of us use precious human resources worrying about what will happen later, but I'm not sure I've ever considered the implications of editing the future. 

I hope you never grow weary of hearing about grace (as it seems that I am forever thinking and writing about it). I think that grace is precisely that-- a way of re-writing the possibility of who we can and will become. If I could open the 2103 file of our lives, I am confident that I would find overflowing evidence of God's glorious unfolding plan. Barring major medical breakthrough, I do not expect to be alive in 2103, but I have unwavering faith that the world that God intends will still be unfolding. 

My current hope is to leave both the past and future to God, and to do my best to open myself to living in and with the present. 

© 2011 Todd Jenkins