All Scriptures quoted are from The New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise quoted.

Where are you right now? In this very moment, this very present moment? Are you here, or, somewhere else? If I were looking only at your eyes, would I see a soulful drift to another time and place or a laser-like focus on this moment? Are you revisiting some memory from yesterday or yesterdays forever gone? Is that where your heart takes you, no matter how hard you try?

Is it true for you that going to church every Sunday is much like visiting a cemetery because the memories of those who once filled your life here but are now gone outweigh all the souls of those still here? It must be hard. If coming into this place takes you back more than anywhere else, if your past will not release you to live in this present moment, my heart genuinely goes out to you.

On the other hand, are you living in a moment that has yet to be born? No doubt, the credit card companies wanted you to charge at Christmas like there was no tomorrow to look forward to. But, now, if you don’t live in the moment when they want you to pay, they’ll come calling for sure. Maybe you’re anticipating a dream you hope to see come true in ’08. Or, maybe you’re looking ahead wondering how you can keep on going, even one more week the way you’ve been traveling up until now.

Something’s got to give. It must be hard to sit still in this moment when something else is calling from on down the road, “Come on, follow me, hurry!” If the temptation of our later years is to spend too much time reminiscing then certainly the temptation of youth is to spend too much time dreaming of the life they someday hope to have.

A high school friend of mine worked as a roughneck in the oilfield one summer. He and his buddies were complaining about the long and hot work and wishing out loud that the day would hurry up and come to an end. An older man working nearby finally interrupted. “When you boys get to be my age, you’ll learn to stop wishing your days away.”

It is surely true that most of our life’s greatest difficulties, perhaps even our worst sins, are rooted in some form of failure to live in the only moment we have. Is there a worse condition than to be forever torn apart in the tug-of-war between yesterday’s unfinished business and tomorrow’s unfulfilled dreams?

If there is a more difficult Christian discipline than the one the apostle Paul laid out for us, please tell us all what it is. “I press on (present tense!) to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I (present tense!) do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on (present tense!) toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (NIV). The apostle is, present tense, applying his power in the only place he has power, in this present moment. In his twice-repeated mantra, I press on, he is making the only choice he can make that empowers him to live in healthy relationship with both his past and his future.

At the beginning of a new year, at the beginning of every new day, are there any other options available to us as well that won’t leave us torn between the past and the future? We all have a past; in Christ, we can all have a future. But, the only place we have any power is in this present moment and what we choose to do with it.

It is the most sacred of all responsibilities, the choice about how we will live in this moment. Joshua challenged the people of his day to choose, in that day, whom they would serve (Joshua 24:15). In David’s great confession, he pleaded with God about the stench of his ever-present past, begging God to set him free so that he would be free in the present to serve and love God again (Psalm 51). It is our choice to look back at what was and say, “I press on.” It’s our choice now, to look back at our past and say, “I press on!” It’s our choice now to look at what may seem daunting and say, “I press on!” If you’d like, you can leave here this morning saying you memorized the scripture for the day. It’s comprised of only three words, “I press on.” Do you? Can you? Will you, press on?

In my native West Texas, starting about this time of year, the sand gusters, as we called them, would blow up on a calm afternoon, about the time we had stripped down to our shorts and T-shirts for athletic training. When they hit, we’d be swept away by 40 mph gusts as though we were being pushed aside like so much floor dust by a giant broom. The temperature would drop, sometimes twenty degrees or more in just a minute or two, and our bare legs would get sandblasted. If you weren’t intentional about how you faced the wind, you could literally get blown over. I remember having to lean into the wind, as if pressing myself against the solid steel door of a bank vault, just to take the next step.

I had to press into the place I wanted to stand or the place I wanted to go; there was no such thing as neutral in that wind. That’s the call of the Christian walk, to press into it, without the weight of yesterday and with only hope for tomorrow but with the full energy of our lives focused on living in this moment.

Pressing into a wind physically, is one thing, isn’t it? Pressing into this mysterious call of Christ on our lives is something else altogether. Just how do we go about doing that? We have many witnesses, three of whom I share with you this morning, others who have already shown us how. People who’ve done the pressing on and lived to celebrate.

From the 13th century, St. Francis of Assisi shares this prayer. Lord , make me an instrument of Thy peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

That’s a prayer about living in this present moment. To look around and say, where I find hatred, in my soul or another’s, I’ll press on for Christ’s present love. Where there is injury, I’ll press on for, lean into, justice. Where there is doubt, I’ll press on until my faith transforms my doubt. Where I meet despair, I’ll press on until I can introduce my despair to my new faith. Where I encounter darkness, I’ll press on until the light dawns again and I can find my way for sure. Where there is even the tiniest seed of sadness, about anything or anyone, I’ll press on until I have smothered its last smoldering embers with the joy that Christ keeps giving.

Do you see? One step at a time, one thing at a time, to live out the presence of Christ in the world where I really live in the moment I’m really living, not somewhere or someplace else.

Two other witnesses, more current, come from among us. I’ve had the most remarkable conversations with three of our Cliff Temple family recently. With their permission, I share part of their pressing on stories.

Tony and Evadelle Medven met and married several years ago. Tony and Evadelle were from opposite sides of the planet but, after they were introduced, found their love for music drawing them to love each other. Both know the deep sadness of losing a spouse before their time. Both know the joy of a God who keeps on blessing, as Tony puts it about his experience, the miracle-working power of God.

Tony escaped from Communist-ruled Yugoslavia in 1956. Under Tito’s rule, that was no small feat. He made his way across the Atlantic to Venezuela on a ship after three grueling, seasick weeks at sea. He just kept pressing on, putting one foot in front of another in the shoes his mother had given him for high school graduation. His only other possession was a one dollar bill she’d also given him. It had come into her possession over a decade before. During WWII, she’d taken in some American paratroopers. She’d sheltered them from the enemy and fed them. When they left, they gave her a one dollar bill, which Tony carried across the Atlantic to start his new life. Landing in Venezuela, he needed bus fare to make it to Caraccus where he hoped to find employment. Bus fare was eighty-five cents. He made to Caraccus with only fifteen cents to spare.

Taking what he could find in the way of work, he finally made it to the United States, got a college education, finally retiring after twenty years of teaching math in Dallas school system. From communist Yugoslavia, to Carraccus on fifteen cents, to our sanctuary this very morning, Tony’s witness is of what he calls the miracle-working power of God in his life as he pressed on in the only moment he had.

The third witness comes from our own Gladys Watt, now ninety-five and with us as well this morning. No one I know pays a greater physical toll to be faithful to her church. When we visited the other day I found her, among other things, to be hilarious. Just ask her what she thinks of Jessica Simpson’s contribution to Tony Romo’s football career.

Gladys told me of losing two husbands, after 28 years of marriage, to cancer. I told her that her possibilities for marriage might be rather limited now only because anyone who married her would know exactly long they had. She said she’s not looking! Yet, Glady’s life is one witness after another of living in the present.

In 1947, she was elected President of the Dallas City Council of PTA’s. She would frequently be called on to speak at what were then rural communities, down rough, unpaved roads, which she drove by herself. She tells of frequently getting lost trying to find her way. Being the preacher and ever on the prowl for good sermon material, I asked her, “Gladys, when you were lost, what did you do?” She said, “Sometimes I’d stop and ask for directions but other times I’d just keep on driving until I found my way again.”

When the President of her Sunday School class passed away, she accepted the position, at 95! Here is a woman who can tell you story after story of faith and struggle. She can have you in stitches one moment and tears the next. Here is a woman with a rich storehouse of memories and with more treasures in heaven than any investment banker holds in stock. Yet, in this moment, she is saying, by the very way she lives in this present moment, “I press on.”

I asked her what she would tell someone who wanted advice about how to get to 95. She said, I would tell them, it’s all up to you. In the context of her faith, she is bearing witness to this simple fact. The only real power we have is, in this present moment, to say, I press on.

Will you? In this present moment, will you press on?