Today's Travels

In The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape advises his nephew, demon Wormwood, to keep the following in mind about the moral backsliding of his human prey: “He must be made to imagine that all the choices which have effected this change of course are trivial and revocable. He must not be allowed to suspect that he is now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space.”

I’ve told my students that with every choice they make with their time finds them either borrowing or investing. They borrow from their future every time they spend time in something with little real reward, with something that is a mere distraction from what they must do or what they want to do. I don’t think they really want to hang out on social media for hours on end. I don’t think they really want to get sucked into video games for hours, night after night after night. Those mind-numbing, low cost-low reward, time-killing activities borrow from their futures.

They invest every time their actions improve their future. Reading, for instance. Taking difficult steps towards whatever goals they might have, regardless of who may be watching, who may be impressed, or what their level of comfort happens to be at that particular time. Building relationships and memories.

This quote speaks to that, as well as to every choice we make. We are headed in one direction or the other - closer towards God, or closer towards attempting to fulfill what only God can fulfill with something else. I read a great article the other day addressing the great moral slides of leaders, both in the church and outside of it. Those falls from grace were not immediate, one time “mistakes”; they were, instead, a series of tiny decisions that led to a long-term slide. As a result, these leaders found themselves one day in the midst of scandal, unable to recognize who they had become or who they once were.

This is true in our behaviors and our thinking, in our relationships and in our personal goals. Today we will either invest in our priorities or borrow against them in the future. How we spend our time will draw us nearer to joy and fulfillment, or nearer to accepting much less. None of us will wake up one day, all of a sudden, exactly where we want to be or a million miles away from it. Instead, one day at a time, we’ll slowly travel in one direction or the other.

The old hymn begs, “Nearer my God, to thee.” I can either wish for it, or take responsibility for where my daily actions take me.