And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God will all your heart and will all your soul, and to observe the LORD's commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?
— Deuteronomy 10:12-13
At the great unveiling, there will be other emotions beside joy. There will be grief and shock and self-reproach and disillusionment. But it need not be so for you and me if we will but use the information we have at hand, if we will but take advantage of the opportunities that lie beside our pathway and the promises that jut like uncut diamonds from the Sacred Scripture. Yesterday may have been marked by shameful failure, prayerlessness, backsliding. Today all that can be changed and tomorrow ? if there is for us an earthly tomorrow ? can be filled with purity and power and radiant, fruitful service. The big thing is to be sure we are not lulled to sleep by a false hope, that we do not waste our time dreaming about days that are not to be ours. The main thing is to make today serve us by getting ready for any possible tomorrow. Then whether we live or die, whether we toil on in the shadow or rise to meet the returning Christ, all will be well.
thought
The past we cannot relive. Today we can offer to God and by his enablement spend it with eternal values in view. Todays well spent contribute to a radiant tomorrow!
prayer
Father, todays I receive from You. May I use the remaining ones for Your glory!
Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.
— James 4:17
Altogether apart from the prophetic expectations of devout men, there is the familiar fact of death itself. Of those Christians who had died, Paul said simply, "Some have fallen asleep." What a vast and goodly company they make, those sleeping saints, and how their number will be increased this year. And which ones among us can give assurance that he may not join them before all the days of the year have run their course? Since we know not what a day may bring forth, does it not appear to be the part of wisdom to live each day as if it were to be the last? Any preparation we will wish we had made, let us make it now. Anything we will wish we had done, let us do it today. Any gift we will wish we had made, let us make it while time is on our side.
thought
Doing today what ought to be done, that is wisdom. That is wise expenditure of todays so that the last day is welcomed not feared.
prayer
Lord, may I spend well the today you have given me. Only You know how many more there will be.
Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth.
— Luke 21:34-35
Would it not be good for us to put away the vain dream of countless earthly days and face up to the blunt fact that our days on earth may actually not be many? For the true church, there is always the possibility that Christ may return. Some good and serious souls hold this to be more than a possibility, for it seems to them as it seems to this writer that "the earth is grown old and the judgment is near," and the voices of the holy prophets are sounding in our ears. And when He comes, there will not be a moment's notice, not an added day or hour in which to make frantic last-minute preparations. "Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man" (Luke 21:34-36).
thought
We may live looking ahead with expectancy or live only for today and be shocked at the arrival of His coming.
prayer
Known only to You, Lord, is the number of my days. May I live them as if each were the last. May I spend them for You!
Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
— James 4:13-14
It was John Milton who said that hope springs eternal in the human breast. Indeed hope is such a vital thing that were it to die out of the heart of mankind, the burden of life could not long be sustained. But precious as this hope may be, it is yet, when it is ill-founded, a dangerous thing. The hope, for instance, which almost all people feel, of long life here on earth, can be for many a deadly snare, a fatal delusion. The average man, when he thinks of his future, suspends reason, falls back on unreasoning hope and creates for himself an expectation of peaceful and unnumbered days yet to come.
This blind optimism works all right till the last day, that inevitable last day which comes to all; then it betrays its victim into the pit from which there is no escape. The perils of groundless hope threaten the Christian too. James sharply rebuked the believers of his day for presumptuously assuming an earthly future they had no real assurance would be theirs, . . .
thought
Only if it is the Lord's will do we greet tomorrow. But if He gives the tomorrow, how will we spend it? So many tomorrows that in the past were wastefully spent. What aboutthis today?
prayer
Lord, You have given me another today. Oh, may I spend it wisely for You!
Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.
— Isaiah 45:22
We of the twentieth century have exactly the same basic needs as the people of the first century. We feel the weight of sin and mortality just as they did. We long for peace and life eternal exactly as they did. We are tortured by fears, stunned by losses, grieved by betrayals, hurt by enmities, made heartsick by failures, scared by threatening death, chased by the devil and frightened cold by the thought of coming judgment. They sat in their simple houses and worried by candlelight.
We speed along in sleek, shiny cars and do our worrying between stoplights. But the end result is the same for everybody: slow progress backward toward old age and the grave with no place to hide and no friend to help. God called His Son's name Jesus because He knew the human race needed deliverance from sin; and He sent the angels to announce "Peace on earth" because He knew the world needed deliverance from the gnawing tooth of inward fear. And nothing basic has changed. We today need Jesus, and we need Him for the same reasons they needed Him 2,000 years ago. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
thought
That inner need of heart remains the same despite the radically changing world. As Charles Wesley put it: "Thou of life the Fountain art, freely let me take of Thee; spring Thou up within my heart, rise to all eternity."
prayer
It is in You, O Lord, that I find life, forgiveness, peace and joy. In You!
Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies. Do you believe this?'
— John 11:25-26
While Jesus grew through the various stages of developing childhood, He never saw a mechanical device more complicated than a cart. He never saw paper, or plastic, or a telephone, or a radio, or a camera, or a printed sheet, or a paved highway, or a gun, or a steam engine, or an electric motor. No one in His day ever got vaccinated or took vitamin pills or consulted a psychiatrist or had a song recorded or rode in a balloon or airplane or elevator. The people of His time had to get along without floating soap, chlorophyll toothpaste, rubber gloves, ready-mix flour, canned peas, Alka-seltzer, parking meters, Wheaties, puffed rice, electric razors, in-a-door beds, wristwatches, typewriters and Band-aids. Jesus never nursed from a rubber nipple or ate a scientifically compounded formula or played with an "educational" toy or attended a progressive school or saw a comic book or owned a toy bomb shelter.
Judged against our present highly complicated manner of life, the people of Palestine in the days of Christ's flesh scarcely lived at all. Were we forced suddenly to live as they did, we would feel that the bottom had dropped out of the world. Surely people who lived so close to nature could not be "real people" (to borrow the language of the liberals). But they were real human beings all right, those simple people of Bethlehem and Capernaum. And the striking thing is that they were exactly the kind of people we are. Not one minor variation distinguishes them from us. Only the externals were different. Those things that have changed belong to the outer man; the inner man has not changed in the slightest.
thought
It's true, isn't it, that the external changes at such a rapid pace that looking back or ahead we marvel at revolutionary change. And yet the heart-needs of men and women remain the same ? Christ in whom is life!
prayer
O Christ, in You is life ? life that endures eternally even though I die physically. May I so live.
Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.
— John 7:38
There is a well-known saying which I think originated with the French, that the more things change the more they remain the same. The wisdom of this saying may be seen in almost every department of human life, the reason probably being that of all the things that change and still remain unchanged, there is no better example than human nature itself. And when do we see the unchanging quality of human nature more perfectly than at Christmas-time? Consider the radical difference between today's world and the world into which the Baby Jesus was born.
Compared with our twentieth-century civilization, everything surrounding the wondrous Child was crude and primitive. Jesus was born in a stable, not in a hospital; His mother was attended by a midwife, not by a skilled scientist; His baby face was lighted by a tallow candle, not by an electric bulb; He traveled into Egypt on the back of the lowly burro, not by auto or streamlined train.
thought
Our great grandparents lived in a radically different world than ours. So shall our great grandchildren. But all of us have intense heart-thirst and find it satisfied only in Christ!
prayer
O God, may those streams of living water flow within me and my thirsting heart be satisfied.
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
— Romans 5:3-4
But Paul's trials yield for us more than this negative kind of blessing. They also teach us positive lessons to help us to endure affliction by that well-known psychological law by which we are able to identify ourselves with others and "halve our griefs while we double our joys." It is always easier to bear what we know someone has borne successfully before us. From the trials and triumphs of Paul, we gather, too, that happiness is really not indispensable to a Christian. There are many ills worse than heartaches. It is scarcely too much to say that prolonged happiness may actually weaken us, especially if we insist upon being happy as the Jews insisted upon flesh in the wilderness. In so doing, we may try to avoid those spiritual responsibilities which would in the nature of them bring a certain measure of heaviness and affliction to the soul.
The best thing is neither to seek nor seek to avoid troubles but to follow Christ and take the bitter with the sweet as it may come. Whether we are happy or unhappy at any given time is not important. That we be in the will of God is all that matters. We may safely leave with Him the incident of heartache or happiness. He will know how much we need of either or both.
thought
We can rejoice in our sufferings because of what God produces in us through those sufferings. Certain qualities of life are only produced through suffering. There is no other way to experience them.
prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for trying to flee sufferings which You allow in order to grow me as Your servant.
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
— Second Corinthians 4:8-9
In reading Second Corinthians, it is difficult to restrain a feeling of real pity for the noble old man as he sweats under the bitter lashings of the enemy. But such pity is wasted now. He has long been where the wicked cease from troubling and the toilworn are at rest. For many long years, his eyes have gazed upon the vision beatific in the land where The red rose of Sharon Distills its heartsome bloom And fills the air of heaven With ravishing perfume. He walks now with the noble army of martyrs and shares the goodly fellowship of the prophets and the glorious company of the apostles. He does not need our pity.
But from Paul and his afflictions we may learn much truth, some of it depressing and some altogether elevating and wonderful. We may learn, for instance, that malice needs nothing to live on; it can feed on itself. A contentious spirit will find something to quarrel about. A faultfinder will find occasion to accuse a Christian even if his life is as chaste as an icicle and pure as snow. A man of ill will does not hesitate to attack, even if the object of his hatred be a prophet or the very Son of God Himself. If John comes fasting, he says he has a devil; if Christ comes eating and drinking, he says He is a winebibber and a glutton. Good men are made to appear evil by the simple trick of dredging up from his own heart the evil that is there and attributing it to them.
thought
Paul had the wisdom to recognize that God's power can be experienced in trial. Not that He always delivers us from trials but that He brings us through trials more like Christ and closer to Him.
prayer
O Lord, may I recognize Your presence and power in trials because through them You are changing me. Thank You!