Will Today Be the Best Day of the Year?

What kind of person are you? Are you one of the cheery, “Good morning, Lord!” type of people, eager and excited about the opportunities and challenges of the new day? Or are you more like the grumpy, “Good Lord…morning!” types, someone who begins each day with trepidation, fearful of what the next hours might present? This is an important consideration, because how we approach each day can significantly affect how it unfolds.

Essayist, poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Write on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.” This view makes a lot of sense. We certainly don’t have yesterday; it’s already passed, quickly moving into the history book of our life. And tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet, so it’s not of much value to us as the moment. It might offer promise, but the quality of our tomorrows can be shaped in large measure by what we do with our todays.

 

Following my open-heart surgery in 2006, I adopted a similar perspective: “Every day is a gift.” Leading up to this major operation, my surgeon had assured that my prognosis was very good. However, he did admit there was a very slight possibility of complications. In surgeries of that type, sometimes the unforeseen does occur. So when I awakened after the nearly six-hour surgery and emerged from my anesthetic-induced mental fog, I rejoiced in knowing the procedure had gone as expected.

 

It's humbling to realize that the life we take so much for granted can hang from a proverbial thread, so to regard every new day as a gift from the Lord is appropriate. As Psalm 90:12 advises, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” 

 

Too often we spend our time obsessed about the future: Graduating from college; getting that promotion (or pay raise); the long-awaited vacation; the moment we emerge from the current crisis; moving onto the next stage of life that we’re certain will be easier and less stressful (even though it won’t).

 

Repeatedly in the Scriptures we’re warned not to focus so much on what’s yet to come that we miss out on what’s already here. Psalm 118:24 declares, “This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” To not appreciate today, the moments we have at hand, is like receiving a gift but casting it aside, unopened, trying to discover what we haven’t been given yet.

 

There’s always the possibility that what we’ve so eagerly anticipated won’t meet our expectations, so we might as well enjoy the day we have right now. “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth,” Proverbs 27:1 admonishes us. 

 

Jesus Himself cautioned against becoming too future-focused, since we might need all the strength and resources we can muster to cope with the demands of the present. “Don’t worry about tomorrow – each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34). Worry, fretting about the future and unknowns that lie beyond our sight can be debilitating. 

And we’re displaying a lack of trust in the Lord’s promise to “give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). It’s much better to recognize today for what it is – a gift – and value it accordingly. It might indeed be the best day of the year, as Emerson suggested. Then, when “tomorrow” transforms into the next “today,” we can receive it thankfully, too.

The Problem with Planning

Goals. Deadlines. Plans. Expectations. Dreams. These are all good, at least in principle. Most of the time. As the old saying goes, “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.” However, as a modern paraphrase of the Robert Burns poem also points out, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

Plans are best written in pencil.

Sometimes, as most of us have discovered, plans aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. We encounter interruptions, unexpected obstacles, or our “ducks in a row” refuse to line up. Intentions that look so good one day fall short the next. Some have surmised that many of God’s greatest laughs must come as He previews our plans.

For many years I’ve been a strong advocate of goal-setting and planning. I learned to make constant companions of my day planners, and I’ve delighted in crossing off items on my to-do lists and writing in things to do in future days and weeks. Plan your work and work your plan. Our recent trip to Italy was the culmination on months of preparations. Just the other day, I scheduled my annual physical for next year. 

However, with the glorious 20:20 clarity of hindsight, I’ve learned plans should be elastic, sometimes even disposable. Because stuff happens – and sometimes it doesn’t. I think of aspirations I had in college; some of those came to fruition while others couldn’t have been more off-target. I couldn’t possibly have planned the directions my career would take or the things I would be able to achieve, along with the worthwhile goals I would never realize.

It’s humbling, sometimes humiliating, but always important to realize as much as we would like to believe the contrary, we’re not in control of many things that go on in our lives. As Proverbs 27:1 admonishes, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.”

But we need to plan, don’t we? It’s irresponsible to face each new day with no idea of what we’re going to do, right? Yes, it is. But we need to balance that necessity with a recognition that God’s thoughts of what we should undertake might be very different from our own. “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. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:13-15).

In His “sermon on the mount,” Jesus offered a similar warning about being too presumptuous about the future, even one day ahead. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear… Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?... Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:25-34).

Someone has wisely observed that “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” This doesn’t prohibit us from setting goals, planning for the future, or trying to figure out how to complete our “bucket list.” That new job or next promotion probably will require some preparations. Next summer’s vacation arrangements won’t take care of themselves. And forward-thinking for Christmas is well-advised. But these all should be filtered through a willingness to submit to God’s plans, knowing His are superior to our own.

As Jesus told his audience, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).

Pondering the Future Presents Problems in the Present

Seems like there’s no time like the present to obsess about the future. Have you noticed how much the future dominates our thinking these days? Whether it’s about what’s going to happen in the White House and Washington, D.C.; the ever-present threat of global terrorism; wondering what in the world’s going on with the weather; where the economy will go, or any number of other looming concerns, everyone’s wondering what the future holds.

I don’t know who said it first, but with each passing day the quip, “The future isn’t what it used to be,” sounds more profound. Consider the visions we held just five or 10 years ago – certainly 20 or 30 years ago – about what the future would bring. Many of these expectations have not only proved inaccurate, but we’ve also discovered some of what did happen didn’t fit anything we could have imagined.

As a boy and young man, I enjoyed pondering the future. I read a lot about it – books by H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and others captivated me. No one has yet invented a means for time travel, but that hasn’t stopped the making of films like “Back to the Future” and its sequels, dystopian horror-thrillers that feed on fears of what may lie ahead, or the recent surge of time-travel dramas on TV that explore both past and future.

It’s a good thing the future doesn’t hit us all at once. As Abraham Lincoln noted, “The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.” In his case, this observation was especially poignant since President Abe had no inkling of his tragic encounter at the Ford Theatre with John Wilkes Booth.

Even minor car accidents have a way of
thrusting aside concerns for the future.

Even one day at a time, however, anticipating the future can prove unsettling. This is hardly a 21^st century phenomenon. Fretting about what the next hour, day, week or year might present is a practice as old as time. Wondering is one thing – but worrying is quite another.

In addressing how pointless it is to worry about what could be, Jesus offered this caution: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34). Proverbs 27:1 expressed this truth a bit differently: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.”

As we’re stewing over tomorrow’s uncertainties, unplanned and unexpected events have a way of rattling our todays. Like my quick run to the grocery store several weeks ago when another driver steered her car into mine. She apparently forgot the law of physics that two objects can’t occupy the same space at the same time. My planned few-minute trip lasted nearly a half-hour, and portions of the next several days were spent dealing with the aftermath.

For those of us who profess to follow Jesus Christ, preoccupation with the future is symptomatic of an even greater problem: Lack of trust in the Lord. Speaking to an assembled crowd, Jesus asked, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?” (Luke 12:25-26).

Perhaps this realization was a backdrop for King Solomon’s declaration when he said, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). We risk becoming so concerned about the future we can’t control that we fail to properly handle matters that are within our present control.

As the apostle James wrote, “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 4:14). Sobered by the realization that we could be here today and gone tomorrow, we’d be wise to give the present most of our attention. It’s foolish to get “misty” about the future with the concrete present at hand.