Be Here Now

A Holy Hobby Moment

I have an interesting relationship with Hobby Lobby as an artist. Whenever I go, I notice the kitschy decorations for holidays months in advance; the commercial branding of whatever season capitalism decides is lucrative. Recently, I went searching for some fabric trim and ended up in a long line of Southern white women, somewhere between 40 and 60 years old, cramming their carts with Fourth of July decorations on clearance. Going to Hobby Lobby as a Black person is an interesting experience. It's as if I can feel the micro-aggressions seep through glares and every customer who suddenly decides there's something else they need in the next aisle. More than anything, though, I love people-watching while I'm in line.

The woman in front of me had a cart overflowing with plush Uncle Sam garden gnomes, flower picks shaped like fireworks rockets, and nearly the entire Red, White, and Moo collection—a series of AI-generated cows wearing American flag sunglasses and Uncle Sam hats. Her outfit explained the source of this taste. She wore a black T-shirt with a blurry cat photo ironed onto it, black shorts, red flip-flops, and a straw hat wrapped in a pastel rainbow ribbon with a medallion that read, America First.

Now, I could absolutely read this woman to filth. Instead, I think God offered me a spiritual insight. What struck me wasn't her decorating choices. It was a much more universal truth: no one really wants to be present. We all want to be somewhere else. Some people escape into the nostalgic past or the promising future. Some curate identities and aesthetics. We decorate our lives to resemble the story we'd rather inhabit than the one we're actually living.

In our individualized culture, aesthetics have become a substitute for meaning. If I have the right style, the right vibe, the right bookshelf, the right playlist, the right political symbols, then surely that says something true about me. Commerce becomes the gatekeeper of identity. But aesthetics are containers for meaning, not creators of it. They are simply windows we look through, not the person doing the looking.

Those women were buying patriotic decorations to place on suburban porches, celebrating an idealized vision of America rather than engaging with its realities and struggles. The decorations weren't really about the Fourth of July. They were about preserving a story they desperately wanted to live. But before I congratulate myself for noticing this, I have to admit something uncomfortable: I do the exact same thing. Maybe my fantasy is just designed better.

Don’t Be Delusional

Fantasy is powerful, and all of us are delusional at some level. I would define delusion as living anywhere except the present. It's becoming trapped in a particular version of the past or obsessed with an imagined future. It's using aesthetics, memories, ambitions, or ideologies to reshape reality into something easier to bear. Because reality is difficult. Reality is painful, abrupt, and filled with responsibility. Reality contains unanswered questions and dreams that don't work out the way we imagined. But reality is also where God is. God always speaks in the present tense. “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14).

The Bible is filled with people who exchanged God's present invitation for a more comfortable delusion. Israel refused God's presence on Mount Sinai and settled for a golden calf (Exodus 32). Gideon almost abandoned his calling because he couldn't see himself the way God saw him (Judges 6:7–24). One of the clearest examples is King Saul. 1 Chronicles 10 describes Saul's final battle against the Philistines. "The fighting grew fierce around Saul, and when the archers overtook him, they wounded him" (1 Chronicles 10:3).

Our minds often become battlefields. When reality refuses to give us easy answers, anxiety grows stronger. But the text doesn't say the fighting was “at Saul”. It says it was “around him”. Saul was wounded, but he wasn't dead. It can be incredibly difficult to recover from a wound. When reality wounds us, we're tempted to believe the wound tells us the truth about our future. We retreat into fantasies of how life should have gone instead of asking God what He's doing now. I know this temptation well.

For a long time, I thought I would work at Elevation Church. It's the church I've attended for nine years, and for a season, I was contracting on special projects. I built meaningful relationships there and learned immeasurable lessons about being a designer and creative. But it wasn't where God wanted me to stay. For years afterward, I obsessed over what went wrong, why I wasn't chosen, and why some friendships seemed to fall apart. Every one of those thoughts had something in common. They were bound to the past. The wound of a dream deferred tempted me to stop walking altogether. My identity was too tied to what God was doing before, not where he was leading now.

A Way Past the Wound

Yet Scripture is full of wounds that don't end in defeat. Jacob limped away from wrestling with God, but he also walked away blessed. Jesus was wounded unto death, yet he rose again in victory. Saul was wounded, but he wasn't dead yet. His wound wasn't what destroyed him. His refusal to face reality did.

1 Chronicles 10:13–14 explains why Saul died: "Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord; he did not keep the word of the Lord and even consulted a medium for guidance, and did not inquire of the Lord." Before the battle, Saul sought out a medium to summon the spirit of the prophet Samuel. Instead of seeking the God of the living, Saul searched for answers among the dead. He was so attached to what had been that he couldn't receive what God was doing now. This led Saul to a dead end.

Jesus offers another way.

So much of His teaching is an invitation into the present moment. At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus announces, "The time has come... The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news" (Mark 1:14–15). Repentance literally means to change your mind or to turn around completely. But what exactly are we changing our minds about? The Kingdom of God is near. Jesus was speaking to people waiting for some distant future when God would finally show up and solve everything. Jesus says, "Change your mind. Believe the good news that God is already here.”

God takes care of redeeming the past and preparing the future. The present is where He asks us to meet Him. Jesus calls us to repent, not repeat. Don't repeat the story of what your past should have been. Don't repeat the fantasies that keep you from seeing reality. Simply, repent. Change your mind about where God is. So many of our Christian spiritual practices are focused on being present. Prayer is deeply rooted in our ability to sit in God’s presence. Meditating on Scripture is contingent on our ability to hear from the Spirit in the present moment.

If Saul had turned toward God after being wounded instead of turning back toward certainty, he might have recognized what God was already doing through David. Instead, Saul repeated the pattern that had defined his life. He clung to the certainty of his own making over trust, to control over surrender, until he could no longer face the God who was standing before him in the present.