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Just
For Today
There
are three days—yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The
population of the world is divided between these three
days. Some are living in the present, some in the past,
and some in the future. Where we are living with respect
to time has a great influence upon our lives. Perhaps we
do not know just where we are living. It might pay us to
make a careful examination of our lives and see whether
the past, the present, or the future is bulking most
largely in our life.
Those who are living in yesterday are living on memories.
Yesterday is gone forever. We can never recall it. I once
knew a home where the wife had died. I visited it a year
or so after her death. It was a gloomy place. The husband
was a gloomy man. He had tried to leave everything in the
home as nearly as possible as his wife had left it. The
musical instrument had been untouched. This man was living
in the past. All the brightness, joy, love, and happiness
came from the past. The present meant nothing to him. The
future held no hope. On the journey of life he was walking
backward. His gaze was ever behind him.
There are many like this man. Their circumstances may be
different, but they are facing the past. Their joys are
the memory of past joys. The sorrow of past troubles,
mistreatments, losses, failures, and sins, shroud their
lives in gloom. Why should we keep these things ever
present with us? Bring not the cares of the past, its
regrets, sorrows, or anything from it that can cast a
gloom upon our today, into the lives we are now living.
Yesterday is only a memory. Let us carefully cover its
scars. Let us not exhibit them to the world. Let us not be
ever looking upon them and thinking over them. Paul's
example is a good one to follow, Forgetting that which is
behind I press forward." We should let yesterday be
yesterday. Someone has said,, "The tears of yesterday
are like passing shower. After the shower should come
sunshine. After yesterday's troubles should come
forgetting. Yesterday's joys should be succeeded by the
joys of today. Let us not live in yesterday. Today is too
full of opportunity. It is heavily laden with good things.
Let us dry the tears of yesterday. Let us turn to today.
There are other people who live in tomorrow. Their joys
are the joys of anticipation, not of realization. True,
anticipation has its real joys, but we should not picture
a tomorrow so bright that it obscures today. We should not
exalt tomorrow so much that today loses its meaning. The
hopes of tomorrow, the bright pictures we paint, are not
reality. We know not whether they ever shall be. Sometimes
people cannot enjoy the things of today because of their
forebodings for tomorrow. Instead of filling the future
with bright anticipations, they fill it with a thousand
ghostly fears. They cross their bridges before they get to
them and because they are ever looking at the bridges
their imagination pictures before them they cannot see the
beauties beside the roadway they are traveling.
For them the flowers beside them bloom in vain. The songs
of the birds are not heard. The beautiful prospects on
each side of their way are lost. The bridge ahead is what
they see. Their attention is so focused on it that they
have no eyes or ears for today. A writer said, "I am
the champion bridge crosser. I not only cross them but I
help build them." He has many relatives today
scattered all over the world. They are in the same
business. The fears of tomorrow are a blight on many
lives.
Jesus, who understood life better than anyone else, said,
"Take therefore no thought for tomorrow, for the
morrow shall take thought for the things of itself."
His meaning is—do not live in tomorrow, do not borrow
trouble. Live tomorrow when you get to it. Live in today.
We know not what tomorrow shall bring forth. When it comes
it will take thought for itself. There will be time enough
to meet its problems, to overcome its difficulties, to
fight its battles, and to rejoice in its victories, when
we have reached it. Let us not neglect today for tomorrow.
Whittier says,
"No longer forward or behind I look in hope or fear,
But grateful take the good I find— The best of now and
here."
Our lives are wholly made of todays. Let us live in the
time that is ours; make the best of it while we may. Let
us enjoy its joys and do its work. Let us live to the full
today, giving to the past and to the future only what is
justly theirs and only what will profit us in the giving.
It is important that we properly meet the things that
come. Someone has said, "Tomorrow we shall smile over
today's worries; so why not begin today?" This is an
excellent philosophy and well worth consideration.. If
adopted it will be a profitable rule of life us.
If we were given now the strength and grace we shall need
tomorrow we could not use it. It would profit us nothing.
If we are strong enough for today tomorrow seed give us no
concern. We shall be strong enough for it when it comes.
Sufficient for today is God's way of giving. Suppose you
try using today the strength and grace you had yesterday.
Does it avail you anything? Then do not look for
tomorrow's grace today, for if you had it today you could
not use it either tomorrow or today.
We should not attempt to solve all the future's problems
now nor to see our way entirely clear before us. Face the
things that are right at hand. Sometimes the difficulties
of today have a way of projecting themselves into the
future so that when we look forward to it we feel we never
can bear it.
Perhaps a little more of my own experience may be helpful
to others. When I was forced to take my bed my sufferings
were very great. These continued month after month. After
several months I was one day lying thinking. The future
began to loom up before me so dark, so discouraging, so
hopeless, that I felt I never could face it. I asked
myself, "How can I endure it?" I was appalled by
the prospect. While I was in this melancholy state it
seemed the Spirit of God drew near and whispered to me,
"You do not have to live tomorrow now. You do not
need to bear tomorrow's pain or suffering now. God knows
what you can bear. He will not let more come upon you than
you can bear. But live today, not the days that are before
you."
I said within myself, "Yes, God knows what I can
bear. He will not let that come which is too great for me.
I will live today. I can bear this today. I will not think
of tomorrow." And so again and again I said to
myself, "I can bear it today." This attitude was
a great help to me, and the sense of God watching over my
life became much more real.
Yes, dear soul, you can bear it today. Whatever your
trouble, whatever your sorrow, whatever your perplexity,
you will find a way of getting through today. When
tomorrow comes there will be a way for tomorrow. Not long
ago I was reading the hymn, "Lead Kindly Light."
I was very deeply impressed by some things contained in
it. The author says, "I do not ask to see the distant
scenes: One step enough for me." He had come to live
in today. But was this a natural characteristic? By no
means. He continues,
"I
was not ever thus—
I loved to choose and see my path."
How human he was. How like the rest of us! But he learned
sufficiently the wisdom of living in today, until he could
say, "One step enough for me." In confidence he
closes:
"So
long thy power hath blessed me,
Sure it still will lead me on
O'er moor and fen,
O'er crag and torrent till
The night is gone."
Today has enough for us to bear, enough for us to conquer,
enough work for us to do. But we shall be sufficient for
it. Many of our troubles of today will pass with today. We
need not carry them into the future. We can meet our
troubles of today as Abraham Lincoln met his,
"Lincoln even when assailed by such anxieties and
griefs as you never will know used to say, 'And this too
will pass."'
Yes, today will pass and tomorrow will come and when
tomorrow comes we shall have tomorrow's strength for its
needs. Let us live in today, in the strength that God
gives, and not permit the shadows of yesterday nor
forebodings for tomorrow to hide the sunshine and beauty
and gladness that come from trust and obedience in today.
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