"A man who could not see the end of his 'provisional existence' was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life. He ceased living for the future, in contrast to a man in normal life. … His existence has become provisional and in a certain sense he cannot live for the future or aim at a goal. …
A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts … But in robbing the present of its reality there lay a certain danger. It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life, opportunities which really did exist …
Instead of taking the camp's difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless. …
Most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners. …
It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future—sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence."—Viktor Frankl 'Man's Search for Meaning'
God is the future.
He stands before you. He's always asking you to follow Him. That means that He must be ahead of you. He has places to take you, He has things for you to do. To follow you must accept His future.
To walk into that future begins now. Now is also the future. This is because God is also present.
God is both the future and the present.
The meaningful life, the purposeful man, will walk beside God toward God.
Meaning can be derived from no other source than knowing God now on the journey to knowing Him better. It is an active present that continuously unfolds into a better future.
If the Christian does not live in the future-present (or the present-future, if you wish) then he will not be a true follower. A past-focused Christian is a turner, not a follower.
Christian, live for Him. Look to Him. Walk to Him. Go to Him. Keep your gaze ahead to Him. And all the while know that He is somehow with you as you press toward Him.
He is, after all, the only who can make the claim: "You know the way to the place where I am going". He is the Way to Himself.
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