This Is the Day

I don’t know how many times I’ve read it, said it, or sung it, but I still have problems getting its truth from my head to my heart, from my worries to my faith, from tomorrow to today. It’s Psalm 118:24 — “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” In our “get-on-to-the-next-thing” culture that is dominated more by the watch than the calendar, more by “next” than “now,” this truth is hard to practice.

For some reason God wants us to pay attention to today. It’s okay to look back, and it's okay to look forward but not if it costs us today. That’s too high a price to pay. “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” The psalmist is not the only one to shine the spotlight on “today.” Didn’t Jesus teach us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”? Didn’t the apostle Paul tell the Ephesians and us to “redeem the time,” that is, make the most of every opportunity we have? And that always begins with today.

Though I’m better at doing this now than I was in my younger years, it’s still a struggle for me. That’s why every now and then I pull a little story from my files to remind me to claim the day. The story, parable, or whatever you want to call it was written by Robert Hastings a number of years ago. It’s called The Station.

Tucked away in our subconscious minds is a vision—an idyllic vision in which we see ourselves on a long journey that spans an entire continent. We’re traveling by train and, from our windows, we drink in the passing scenes of cars on nearby highways, of children waving at crossings, of cattle grazing in distant pastures, of smoke pouring from power plants, of row upon row of cotton and corn and wheat, of flatlands and valleys, of city skylines and village halls.

But uppermost in our conscious minds is our final destination—for on a certain hour and on a given day, our train will pull into the station with bells ringing, flags waving, and bands playing. And once that day comes, so many wonderful dreams will come true, and all the jagged pieces of our lives will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. So restlessly, we pace the aisles and count the miles, peering ahead, cursing the minutes for loitering, waiting, waiting, waiting for the station …

“Yes, when we reach the station, that will be it,” we cry. “When we’re eighteen! When we buy that new Mercedes Benz! When we put the last kid through college! When we earn that promotion! When we pay off the mortgage! When we retire!” Yes, from that day on … we will all live happily ever after.

Sooner or later, however, we must realize that there is no station, no one place to arrive once and for all. The joy is in the journey.

The station is an illusion—it constantly outdistances us. Yesterday’s a memory; tomorrow’s a dream. Yesterday’s a fading sunset; tomorrow’s a faint sunrise. So, shut the door on yesterday and throw the key away, for only today is there light enough to live and love. It isn’t the burdens of today that drive men mad. Rather, it’s regrets over yesterday and fear of tomorrow. Regret and fear are the twin thieves who would rob us of that golden treasure we call today, this tiny strip of light between two nights.

“Relish the moment,” is a good motto, especially when coupled with Psalm 118:24, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, swim more rivers, climb more mountains, kiss more babies, count more stars. Laugh more and cry less. Go barefoot oftener. Eat more ice cream. Ride more merry-go-rounds. Watch more sunsets. Life must be lived as we go along. The station will come soon enough.

Yes it will. So in the meantime enjoy, survive, endure, and/or relish the moments day by day. There’s God’s wisdom in that. But don’t miss this important distinction. It is not, “Live for today”—as if there were no tomorrow. It is simply: “Live today.” As someone once put it so well, “The past is history; the future is mystery; today is a gift—that’s why we call it the present.”

Do yourself a favor and open that present today.

Like Sand Through the Hourglass

Some time ago I stumbled across this anonymous take on the journey of life:

"Life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time, all your weekends, and what do you get at the end of it? I think that life is all backward. You should die first and get it out of the way. Then you live twenty years in an old-age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young. You get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You go to college; you party until you’re ready for high school; you go to grade school; you become a little kid; you play. You have no responsibilities. You become a little baby; you go back into the womb; you spend your last nine months floating; and you finish up as a gleam in somebody’s eye."

Nice, huh? But reality works our journey in the other direction: we are born, we live our years whether few or many, and we die. A popular soap opera opens their show with these words: “Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”

I’ve been thinking about that sand through the hour glass a lot these days because of what’s been going on in my own life. In the month of June alone, I’ve officiated three weddings and four funerals; I’ve led a Parent-Child Dedication Service for three sets of parents and their new babies; I attended a surprise party for my son’s 30th birthday; I’ve spent time with a guy who was in my youth group from ’79-‘81—he is now 48 years old and a grandfather; I attended a 36-year high school class get-together and my in-laws’ 55th anniversary party. That's a lot of hellos and goodbyes and blasts from the past. Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

That’s life. Time rolls on and waits for no one. Columnist Charley Reese once wrote: “When each human being is born, God opens a checking account in his name and makes a single deposit. The currency is more valuable than gold or platinum. It’s time. No deposits are allowed. No interest is paid. The most intriguing thing about it is we are never allowed to know the balance in our accounts. We just write checks on it until suddenly one day we are notified that the balance is zero and the account is closed.” So true.

But it seems like we don’t appreciate the brevity of life until we get a few years behind us. Not long ago I was visiting via Facebook with a high school friend and we got to chatting about the time we were flying up highway 65 as he was trying to see how fast his Opal Cadet could go. By the time we hit around 100 mph, the car started shaking and rattling. Until he got it slowed down, we both were pretty sure we were going to crash and die. Until that moment I sort of assumed I would live forever. I'm too old to think that anymore. And so are many of you reading this. When we look around and see people we knew in their youth now middle-aged, when we see children we rocked rocking children of their own, when we see some of our peers already in the grave, and a generation we looked up to pretty much dead and gone, it's a bit sobering. It’s sobering to become part of the “terminal generation”—the generation standing at the front of the line at the cemetery gate.

Most people get to this point with some unfulfilled dreams and a few regrets. Knowing we can’t hit the rewind button and don’t get any do-overs for days gone by can feel a little heavy on the soul. And there’s really no antidote for it. We can’t change the past. But we can do some things. We can be grateful for the many good things in the past. We can give thanks that God works for good in all things and has a way of turning our bumbles into blessings. And we can do this too: we can embrace the present. The psalmist said, “This the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” We can do that. We can do that day by day through the sunshine and the rain. We can embrace the present in the confidence that God meets us there. Someone once said, “The past is history, the future is mystery, today is a gift—that’s why they call it the present.” So receive the gift of today. Give thanks for it. Rejoice in it. Make the most of it. Don’t just exist today, live today. Look and feel and listen and taste and smell and pray and whistle a little and sing some. Endure your troubles, enjoy your blessings. Hug those closest to you. Speak life into someone who needs you. Lift up someone who has fallen. Do the right thing even if it’s the hard thing. Live today. Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives. For all you know, there may only be a few grains of sand left to fall. So live today.

And as you do, remember this: if you know Jesus, when that last grain of sand falls from the top of the hourglass to the pile at the bottom, the end of your life on earth is but the beginning of your life in heaven—that place where we no longer mark time with clocks or calendars and where hourglasses are turned on their sides, that place where hardships are gone and rejoicing comes easy. That place where, as C. S. Lewis so aptly put it: all the adventures we have ever had will end up being only “the cover and the title page.” Finally we will begin “Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Praise the Lord: that day is coming. But until that day, whether you've got more sand in the bottom of the hourglass or the top, remember to live today.