“I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward” (Charlotte Bronte).

I’ve found that when I focus exclusively on the future, it often leads to anxiety. When I all I do is look back at the past, I find despair.

The place where God meets with me isn’t in the future or the past, but here and now. The best way to see God isn’t to look forward or backward but upward.

Sometimes, when I’m hiking at Radnor Lake, I get so caught up in my own thoughts (usually about what’s coming up in the next few days) that I fail to take in what’s around me.

If I’m dwelling on what’s past or what’s yet to come, I can miss God speaking to me now. I can miss what God is doing around me now.

Don’t look back or forward as much as you look upward.