How am I going to live this day? It is a question that I have not asked myself often enough. Certainly, when I lived under the control of substances I was willing to live my life moment to moment sometimes because I was living from one high to the next. I guess such questions as how I would live that day never came to mind. I was to busy chasing the allusive escape.
My job was another deterrent to such questions. Most of my career I thought I knew how I was going to live each day. Work was the all controlling, all consuming entity. My drive to succeed at my trade was the most powerful force in my life. Not even my addictions could deter me from showing up every day and most days doing the job well. But as with all consuming things it shut out my ability to love or even question how I was living my life.
Yes, I had those moments when I would look at the wastage of my life and ask the question every one of us has asked at least once in our lives, “What does this all mean?” But most times when I awoke in the morning I was either still under the influence and with the logic of an addict would consume more alcohol or drugs to ‘even myself out’ Or I would be on edge because I had not been able to score the drugs I thought I needed. I did not have time for such pithy questions as, “How am I going to live this day.”
What led me to write this today was that recent events in my life including the reoccurrence of cancer have made me more introspective than I have been. Since I retired back in 2016 I have sought the big picture answer from God, “What am I going to do for You in ministry?” And to be perfectly honest I have been disappointed in what I have seen as lack of answers. I have struggled to see that each day has its own value and its own calling to ministering in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Maybe you struggle with this too. Getting caught up in the big picture and letting the moment or the person God has put in front of you slide right by because you like myself are too busy looking into the distance. How about we share verses from God’s Word that may encourage us today to live in the moment and to know how we are going live this day for Him:
“Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day [is] the evil thereof.” (Matthew 6: 31-34)
“Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” (Hebrews 13:5)
“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”- yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist and then it vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4: 13-15)
To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and turns back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9: 59-64)
I am a hard-headed guy and have refused to see the blessings of each day. Looking into the distance, waiting for the parade to come over the hill. I have missed so many opportunities that the Lord has put in front of me. In the last verses I shared from Luke, I think Jesus is telling each of us not to live our life in the past. And in the first verses I shared from Matthew he is pleading with us to not live in the future. Our moment is now. That is where each of us need to be.
So today if I ask the question, “How am I going to live this day.” It all comes down to moments. Even that question is to broad. The better one is, “How am I going to live this moment.” My answer is, and I pray yours also that I will live it as the Holy Spirit leads, not looking to my past or glaring into my future. The truth is Jesus is coming soon, as for some of us that day may be today. I want to be proclaiming his kingdom this moment, how about you?
Blessings & Happy Sabbath, John
6/29/18
