By J.R. Miller
Time is given to us in days. It was so at the beginning. We need not puzzle or perplex ourselves trying to understand just when the day was, in which God wrought in creating the universe. But it is interesting to know that each day had its particular apportionment in the stupendous work. At the end of the creative periods we read, "There was evening and there was morning--one day." So it has been ever since. Time is measured to us not by years--but by days. Each day has its own particular section of duty, something that belongs, that is to be done, in between sunrise and sunset, that cannot be done at all if not done in its own hours. "There was evening and there was morning--one day, a second day, a third day."
This breaking up of time into little daily portions, means a great deal more than we are accustomed to think. For one thing, it illustrates the gentleness and goodness of God. It would have made life intolerably burdensome, if a year instead of a day had been the unit in the division of time. It would have been hard to carry a heavy load, or to endure a great sorrow, or to keep on at a hard duty, for such a long stretch of time. How dreary our common task work would be--if there were no breaks in it, if we had to hold our hands to the plough for a whole year! We never could go on with our struggles, our toils, our suffering, if night did not mercifully settle down at such brief intervals with its darkness, bidding us rest and renew our strength.
We do not understand what a blessing here is for us, in the shortness of our days. If they were even twice as long as they are, life would be intolerable. Many a time when the sun goes down we feel that we could scarcely have gone another step. We would have fainted in failure and defeat--if the summons to rest had not come just when it did.
Night with its darkness seems to be a blot on the whiteness of day. It seems to fall across our path as an interruption to our activity, compelling us to lay down our work when we are in the very midst of it, leaving it only half done. It seems to be a waster of precious time, eating up half the hours. How much more we could accomplish, we sometimes say, if the sun did not go down, if we could go on without pause!
Night throws its heavy veil over the lovely things of this world, hiding them from our view. Yet its deep shadow is no stain on the splendor of the day. It is no thief of time, no waster of golden hours, no obscurer of beauty. It reveals as much loveliness as it hides, for no sooner is the sun set, leaving earth's splendor of landscape, garden and forest swallowed up in gloom--than there bursts upon our vision the other splendor of the sky filled with glorious stars.
When the privilege of work is interrupted by the coming of the night, God has another blessing ready for us--the blessing of sleep. One may figure out with a fair show of mathematical certainty, that it is a waste of time to spend one third of each twenty four hours in the unconsciousness of idleness of sleep. But these hours which seem to be lost, in which we appear to be doing nothing, bring us new gifts from God.
"He gives His beloved sleep." We lie down with our vitality exhausted in the toils, tasks, and struggles of the day. We could not have gone another hour. Then, while we sleep, God comes to us in the silence and refills the emptied fountains. It is really a new creation which takes place in us, while we sleep a nightly miracle of renewal and restoration. We die, as it were--and are made to live again.
So night, which seems to us a waste of precious hours, is a time of God's working in us. He draws the veil of darkness that none may see Him when He visits us in loving ministry. He folds us in the unconsciousness of sleep, that we ourselves may not know when He comes or how He gives to us the marvelous blessings. When then morning returns and we awake strong and filled with new life, we learn that God has visited us, though we knew it not.
Thus we get hints of the graciousness of the divine thoughtfulness in giving us time in periods of little days, which we can easily get through with, and not in great years in which we would faint and fall by the way.
It makes it possible for us to go on through all the long years and not be overwrought, for we never have given to us at any one time, more than what we can do between the morning and the evening.
Not only are the days short, so that we can go on to eventide with our work or our burden--but they are separated as by an impassable wall so that there may be no overflowing of one day's care or responsibility into the field of another. Night drops down its dark curtain between the days, so that we cannot see today, anything which is in tomorrow. Our Lord taught us that we sin if we let ourselves try to carry the load of any but this one little day.
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 6:34. If we allow ourselves to borrow anxiety from tomorrow, we shall find that we have a greater load than we can carry. There is just enough for our full measure of strength--in the duty and the responsibility of the one day. If then we add to this the burden also of tomorrow, our strength will fail. We do great wrong to ourselves, therefore, when we go out of today--to get burdens which do not belong to us.
The only true way to live, therefore, is one day at a time. This means that we should give all or strength to the work of the present day, that we should finish each day's tasks by nightfall, leaving nothing undone at setting of the sun which we ought to have done that day. Then, when a new morning dawns, we should accept its duties, the bit of God's will it unrolls for us, and do everything well which is given us to do. We may be assured, too, that there is something for each moment, and that if we waste any portion of our day, we shall not make it complete. We should bring all the energy and all the skill of mind, heart, and hand to our duty as we take it up, and do nothing carelessly or negligently. Then we can lay our day back into God's hand at nightfall with confidence, saying, "Father, I have finished the work You gave me to do today."
Robert Falconer's creed gathers into its four articles a very clear summary of our Lord's teaching concerning the whole duty of man: "First that a man's business is to do the will of God. Second, That God takes upon Himself the care of the man. Third, Therefore, that a man must never be afraid of anything. Fourth, and so be left free to love God with all his heart, and his neighbor as himself."
So, we should never be anxious about either yesterday or tomorrow. Yesterday is gone, and we can never get it back to change anything in it. It is idle, therefore, to waste a moment of time or a particle of strength fretting over it. Tomorrow is not yet ours, and we should not touch its life until it becomes our today. God means us to put our undivided energy, into the doing of the present day's work. If we do this, we shall have quite enough to keep our heart and our hands full from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same.
In this way, too, doing faithfully the work of this day, we shall best prepare for tomorrow. One day's duty slighted or neglected, prepares confusion or overburdening for the next day. The days are all woven together in God's plan, each one following the one before, and fitting into the one coming after it. Each takes up the work which the day before brought to its feet, and carries it forward to deliver it to the one which waits. A marred or empty day anywhere spoils the web, losing its thread.
If we learn well this lesson of living just one day at a time, without anxiety for either yesterday or tomorrow, we shall have found one of the greatest secrets of Christian peace. That is the way God teaches us to live. That is the lesson both of the Bible and of nature. If we learn it--it will cure us of all anxiety, it will save us from all feverish haste, and it will enable us to live sweetly in any experience.
