Adam Ramsey, Faithfully Present: Embracing the Limits of Where and When God Has You. Good book Co. 2023.
Many of us live in a rush. We’re busy, distracted, and juggling multiple balls. Our mind is often not just on what’s happening now, but what is next, and what’s coming down the line faster than we would like. We also have our mind on things happening elsewhere. We feel bombarded not only by all that is going on in our work, family, and church life but by constant social media interactions, and news from around the world that seems mostly to be negative. Little wonder we’re stressed and anxious.
Into this kind of world, Adam Ramsey speaks a timely word. It’s a word about being focused on here and now. Here, in the place where God has placed us; and now, in this moment he has given to us. In both our time and our place, we need to be truly and fully present. “If we constantly have our minds set on the next thing or another place, we miss the life God has actually given us… it is when we embrace our God-given limitations, being faithfully present to what God desires to do in us and through us, that we become most truly alive” (p15). God has limited us in our time and in our place. Only God is eternal and omnipresent. We are not and we are not meant to be. We are best living right here, now, where God has placed us.
Ramseys’ book unfolds a rich, practical, biblical and spiritual meditation on these two themes: time and place. Several chapters on “time” unpack a biblical perspective on time, on the seasons of life, on the benefits of times of waiting, on our propensity to live in a hurry, on the necessity of times of rest, on memories from past times, and on the time we all face when we will one day die, unless the Lord comes back first.
The chapters on “place” explore our place right here where we are (as opposed to living in the disembodied digital world), our place in the human body God has given to us, on the relational spaces God has placed us in and, finally, on the ultimate place we have our eyes on, namely a new earth in the presence of God for eternity.
Throughout the book, Ramsey wants us to embrace the life we have here and now rather than yearning to be somewhere else or doing something else. We need to see the blessing of our limitedness. We need to see God’s grace where he has placed us. We need to live faithfully in the present. As he opens this up, he does so with both wit and insight, humour and humility. He has a very accessible style of writing but combines that with freshness and wisdom. Repeatedly I found a concept I knew well came alive in a new way as it was pressed compellingly on my heart. Whether it was his reflections on the development of the clock and how it changed the way we live, or on the incarnation and what it says about how God views bodies, or heaven and how that shapes the way we live now, the book is a stimulus for reflection and meditation.
Even if your life is not busy and you are confined to one place that you would rather not be, the truths of this book will help orient you to making the most of that God assigned time and place. Conversely, if life is frenetic, the realities addressed here will help you have the courage to slow down.
I intend to read this again, slowly, in a time and place when I can absorb it well. I’d encourage you do to that same.