One of my favorite Bible verses proclaims a truth of which we should be reminded as we greet each new day: “This is the day that God has made; on it let us rejoice and be glad.” (Psalms 118:24)
The recognition that each day is another gift, that each day is an occasion of joy and gladness can go a long way toward making us aware of the extraordinary privilege of being alive right here and right now. This awareness can in turn inspire us to live each day more intensely and fully.
Too much of our living is done in the past or in the future while we neglect the present. But yesterday is a cancelled check and tomorrow is a promissory note.
Only today is cash at hand for us to spend. “This is the day…”
Mary Storm Jameson, the British novelist, has spoken direction to this theme:
I believe that only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present. Many of us spend 59 minutes an hour living in the past, with regret for lost joys, or shame for things badly done, or in a future that we either long for or dread.
Yet the past is gone beyond prayers, and every minute we spend in the vain effort to anticipate the future is a moment lost. There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute, here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle. Which is exactly what it is, a miracle and unrepeatable.
When my children were younger and we would start out on a road trip in my car, one of them was in the habit of asking about five minutes after we left, “Dad, are we almost there?” A few minutes later she would ask, “When are we going to get there?”
This is a question that is typical of too many of us. When are we going to get there? We are often so anxious to get there that we don’t enjoy the journey. And we forget that life is a journey, not a destination.
We are always looking ahead to something in the future. We are preparing for graduation, for a profession, for working to pay off a mortgage, to our children becoming independent. And we wonder when are we going to get there? And then one day it suddenly dawns on us that we’ve been there all along and we should have enjoyed the journey a lot more. We should have paid more attention to some of the lovely scenery that we were passing en route. We should have lived more in each today.
Life is a journey, not a destination, and happiness is not “there” but here; not tomorrow but today. Good things can happen, do happen, and should happen today, if we make sure that they happen and if we learn how to live today.
So remember the past, live the present, trust the future. “This is the day that the Lord has made. On it, let us rejoice and be glad.”
North Cape May – Another shout out to Officer Bohn, the school resource officer at LCMR. I admire his hard work and devotion to the students and staff as I see him every morning and afternoon, snow, wind , sleet or…
