Into The Future

The Super Bowl is over now and many sports enthusiast begin to watch more basketball or even start thinking about the upcoming baseball season. Many young people will start playing baseball or softball soon. I remember reading an article one time about a high school baseball player who wanted his team to reach the state tournament held in the month of June. He made a sign on his bedroom door that said, “Work for June”. This reminded him to work hard and visualize his dream.

Think back to some of the great movies of the past. In the movie “Field of Dreams” there is a voice “If you build it, they will come” that inspires the building of the baseball field. In the movie “Cars”, the racing car would get ready for a race by telling himself that he was the fastest. He was priming his engine for the race ahead. The character played by Dick Van Dyke in the movie “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” was a dreamer and believed in his God given ability to invent. As is turned out, the inventions with imperfections were his greatest. Remember the flying car and the candy with holes in it that could be used like a whistle.

What will it be like in the future? What new inventions might occur? Here’s a video of Walter Cronkite in 1967 talking about the home office of the future.

I wrote in a previous post about a baseball coach who gave a pep talk to his team before a game. The main point of the talk was that you have to picture in your mind about hitting the baseball. Once the mind sees, it believes and then a person can achieve. This same technique can be used in winning at life as we see ourselves winning in our marriage, our business, or profession.

Like my pastor Steve Ramsdell has said before, we can reprogram our mind if we put Christ as our CPU “Central Processing Unit”. Fulfilling our purpose in life is not about knowledge. It is about how to live life and becoming good at applying the intangibles of faith into the tangibles of good deeds.

A friend from my Sunday school once sent an email that explained how important it is to understand that we don’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands because we need one hand to be able to throw something back. Thinking of a catcher’s mitt: the more we use it, the more it becomes broken in. In the same way, we can break in our ability to catch the principles found in God’s Word. Then we are ready to throw something back because our hearts are ready to initiate the application our faith.

One way to help apply our faith is to be prepared for each day by reading a short block of scripture and having a daily prayer time. We can ask for guidance and write down lessons that we can build on throughout life. We can also pray for a successful day with Jesus by our side. This is the best way to cultivate our inner garden of our private worlds as coined by Gordon MacDonald. He tells us in the book “Ordering Your Private World” that it is important to have principles and models found in the bible. Then tie in music, sports, books, art, nature or whatever interest we have. Once we tie these together, Bible study becomes much more user friendly so that it is easy to catch onto, relate, and share or throw back to others.

As we step ahead into the future, let us pray for the inventions of the future. Will there be a cure for cancer? Will there be another new technology come about to change the world as much as the personal computer, iPad, Kindle Fire, etc.? Along the way, let us ask for the Spirit to guide us with visions of hope as we pray for God to deliver his blessings.

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