here, now, you

I can remember when I was a child going to the beach in the Summer holidays with my family.
We would be laden down with deckchairs and windbreaks and picnic blankets and towels and buckets and spades and food in baskets.

The first thing we always did was to find somewhere to 'camp' - one bit of beach looked the same as another to me and yet my dad would take us on a long trek to find the perfect place to stake our claim. For miles, it seemed, we would walk when I just wanted to stop, get my trunks on and jump in the sea.
Strangely, now that I have a family of my own, I do the same thing as my dad - looking for the perfect place for the perfect beach experience.

God is calling us to stop looking for the perfect 'somewhere else, sometime else, someone else' - pitch your tents and set up camp because it is here and it is now and it is you that God has called you to.
Your 'here' is the place where you are - maybe not forever but certainly for today. Your work place, your home, your course, your friendships, your area where your living now, your family, your region, your church. Your location of all the places in the world is where God has called you so immerse yourself in it and celebrate it and be 'incarnational': become part of your community rather than looking for the ideal community elsewhere to set up your deckchair.

Your 'now' is the 21st century - you cannot live yesterday. Society has changed and we must change with it if we are to be relevant with the gospel. To bring the eternal values of God into the context of today.
At this time of redundancies and terror and post-post-modernism what is the church saying and more importantly what are you (the church in flesh) saying - how are you impacting the now - is it with the strategies of the past?

Your 'you' is being the best that you are in God. Fearfully and wonderfully made. No-one is like you and therefore God chose here and now for you to be - it is a perfect fit. Take all that God has made you to be and be it where others are - incarnationally present here and now reflecting all the glory of God that He has placed deep in you for this time and for this place.

What are you doing on a Friday night? Where are you going on a Monday evening? Who are you with in the middle of the week? What difference have you made this week in the eternal salvation journey of those around you?
Here, now, you.