Sufficient for today

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Matthew 6:34

 

This morning I woke up with thoughts of the unborn baby…so tiny…so fragile…growing in my womb. It was one of those moments when you all of a sudden remember something and it hits you like it’s the first time you’ve known of it. For a brief moment it was like finding out about that precious life all over again.

Yesterday didn’t exist…tomorrow wasn’t a thought. Just right here, right now, and the baby that was on my mind and in my heart.

Later I read an email from a friend. This friend recently received a medical diagnosis that has affected her life and her children’s lives. It has also affected all of us who love her. In that email she talked of focusing only on today.

Those two things, coming so close together, reminded me of something I already knew. We aren’t promised tomorrow. Today is all that matters. I’ve seen signs before that say things like ‘have you hugged your child today’?

Today.

This moment.

That’s all we’re promised. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. No matter what we think will come our way we’re told today is all we get.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. James 4:13-17

I used to believe I did a good job of living in the moment. I said I took things as they came, went with the flow. And I did do that but at the same time I did those things, lived that way, at a time in my life where very little changed. I had to face a few issues that cropped up unexpectedly but they were always things that stretched me but didn’t break me. They tested my patience, or my security, at the moment but in the end I was left knowing things would pretty much go on in my life as they had been.

Then one day something came into my life that changed it more than I would have anticipated. I didn’t see it coming. Almost overnight things changed for me in a very big way. And those changes kept coming. My life changed, the people in my life changed. I grew, I learned. And I loved.

But in the midst of all that…circumstances totally beyond my control started forcing me to see exactly what it meant to live for today. Thoughts of tomorrow were worrisome. Plans for the future couldn’t be made because I had no idea what the future was. I still don’t.

Because I can’t fathom what my life will be like just a few short months from now…I’ve learned to grab onto this day, to this moment. I’ve learned to hold onto what I have now and trust the Lord for tomorrow and whatever may come.

He has a plan for me, for my life, for my family. It’s not my place to question what that is. Through circumstances I couldn’t have foreseen less than a year ago the Lord has brought many blessings into my life and has used the changes that came with them to teach me that today is all that matters. Because… sufficient for today is its own trouble.

And I have seen that too.

When I stopped thinking ahead, stopped planning for tomorrow, I was able to look at the troubles in this day, whatever they happened to be, and they were easier to bear. But it wasn’t just the troubles that were easier, the moments became sweeter.

If we can find a way to look at life where right here, right now is all we have…

How much sweeter are those moments spent talking to our husband?

Held in his arms?

How much more precious is a hug from your child?

How much more important are the words ‘I love you’?

Our human nature has a tendency to dwell on what’s to come tomorrow, next week, next month. But if we can get our minds to grasp the fact that those times are far off, that even the very next second isn’t promised to us, how much more does this second mean?

The baby growing in my womb has no concept of time or space. Troubles don’t matter to it. It lives in a watery world where there is no hunger, no thirst. The temperature is constantly the same. It doesn’t think on the future or the past. It simply…is.

It is only with birth into this fallen world, with time spent where evil and trials abound that we learn to focus on tomorrow instead of the here and now.

The Lord has used so many circumstances to make me see that this moment in time is all that matters. And still I fail at looking at life and the moment the way I should. When I forget to focus only on now…that’s when I fall, it’s when I stumble. It’s when I get worried and stressed. It’s when I see the earth and its troubles instead of the Lord and the future He has in store for me.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.  For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3:1-3

Earthly life has a way of distracting us from those thoughts, from where our focus should be. I had to learn that lesson the hard way, had to learn to live only in this moment.

And I’m grateful for the lesson.

Life is so much sweeter when my focus is where it should be.