The God of Forever, The God of Right Now by Anna Cosper

Forever. 

You'd think such a concept would need more than 7 letters to encapsulate it. Such a word, forever. I think it probably beckons something different to everyone's mind. For me, it beckons infinite sameness. 
Sameness—it is a joy to find a sameness you can stand with; it is a dreadful thing to be chained to a sameness that knocks the wind from your lungs. 
And it changes—our day-to-day sameness—in the span of mere seconds, your sameness can go from an open field of peace to an enclosed prison cell. 

Oh Lord, you can have my forever because forever is something I know I can't control. Forever is something even I can't plan. But to hand you my here and now? To hand over my tender, heart-carved dreams in all their fragility? That requires a surrender hard to come by. 
No matter how many times he shows me he can get me through any storm, I still somehow find myself out here measuring waves and calculating where these winds will take me. 

He is, indeed, the God of forever. 
He is forever—the personification of infinite sameness.
He is eternity and always. 
But he is also right here. 
He is also right now. 

I think that perhaps we fall into the chasm of forever and forget that he is a very present God. It is easy to sit on our constricted-by-time shoreline and watch him from a distance because to draw in is to wade into the ever-expansive waters of uncertainty. But he meets us at our shorelines and beckons us to step out—step out into the here and now and trust him with the oxygen circulating within our lungs this very moment. 
Perhaps we trust him with forever more easily—at least I find it easier to trust him with forever because forever feels far. But to trust him in the right here moments, to know that he is with us and he is God in these moments can be harder. 
The air around us in this moment sometimes feels fragile. 
And we have built up our walls, fortifying ourselves in our plastic palaces that are actually prisons. 
We watched from our shorelines this God of forever and turned within ourselves—looked within ourselves—to find peace and strength. We deemed him as distant as the foreverness we knew him to be.
Did we forget? 
Did we allow ourselves to believe that it was up to us to remain steady? 
Oh, weren't we ever taught that it is not upon shorelines that houses should be built? 

We are but a drop of water in an ocean of endlessness—of foreverness.
But he who is the God of forever is the God of right now. 
He who has sewn his children into the promise of eternity is the same God who stitched your heart to his. He is as much here as he is always. 
And maybe your hope in the here and now is one that is threadbare, one that feels like it might fall into nothingness if you tug at a loose end too hard. But he is the God of your threadbare hope, too. He is the God of your doubt, the God of your uncertainty, the God of your darkest nights. 

He is God over the burning, brimming-with-sorrow eyes. 
He is God over barely breathing lungs—for every breath you've ever taken and every breath you'll ever take. 
He is God over this life you can't seem to get right, over the broken relationships, grief, illness, job loss. 
You can trust God with right now, just as you can with forever. 

And here's the thing—our forever, though seemingly far off—is right now. He is not just forever and always; he is forever and right now. 
“This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent —Jesus Christ” (John 17:3 CSB).
Our eternity is here. 
Lift your head and see that the God of right now is breaking past reefs and waves to make his way to you. He is right here with you, and he will forever be. 

Anna Cosper is a college student and English tutor in rural Alabama. She is a blogger and intern for Ann Voskamp’s ministry. She enjoys a good book, a cup of coffee, writing to reach the vulnerable, leading worship at her church, and spending time with Jesus. Anna is passionate about writing about the very real struggles of day-to-day life and finding Jesus in the details of it all. You can usually find her analyzing literature, singing the harmony to every song she hears, and spending time with people that make her soul glad.