A Day at a Time
By Archibald Alexander.
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This book
written in wartime
to minister comfort
and if it may be to reinforce hope
and faith
is dedicated
by permission
to
Sir John R. Jellicoe
G.C.B., K.C.V.O.
Admiral of the Grand Fleet
“There are nettles everywhere,
E. B. Browning
But smooth green grasses are more common still;
The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.”
A Day at a Time
And Other Talks on Life and Religion
I
A Day at a Time
“As thy days, so shall thy strength be.”
Deuteronomy 33:25
If any one of us knows a word of hope or has picked up a message of comfort anywhere, it is his plain duty to share it, these days. We owe it to each other to cherish as exceeding precious, and to pass on to others, every brave and helpful word or thought we come across.
Well, here is a splendid one for us all, and especially for those who have most at stake in this great conflict, and are looking anxiously ahead and fearing what the weeks may have in store—“As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” It is a great and glorious promise. And just a couple of verses further on, it is caught up and included in one greater still—“The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.” Fathers and mothers, with a boy, or more than one, perhaps, away on active service for King and country, this promise is for you, to take to your heart and hide there, like some precious secret between you and God—As thy days, so shall thy strength be.
Notice carefully, however, how the promise runs. Not, mark you, as your life is, not as your years are, not even as your weeks are, but as your days, so shall your strength be. For each day as it comes, God’s promise is that strength will be given you, but just for a day at a time. The way to live under any circumstances, but especially in these hard weeks, is just a day at a time. Leave tomorrow with God, my brother, until it comes. That is what the Word of God lays upon you as a duty. Live this day at your best and bravest, trusting that God’s help will not fail you. And for the duties and trials of tomorrow, however hard and heavy, believe that strength for that day also will be given you, when it comes.
You cannot have failed to observe what an important place this way of living had in the teaching of Jesus Christ. He was always trying to get men to trust the coming days to God, and to live fully worthily and nobly today. He was dead against the practice of adding to the burdens of today fears and forebodings for tomorrow. It is in love to us, in His desire to save us unnecessary pain, that He bids us remember that “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
In one of R. D. Blackmore’s fine open-air stories, there is a character who talks at length about horses. After comparing good ones and bad ones in their behaviour the first time they breast a hill with a load behind them, he sums the matter up thus: “Howsoever good a horse be, he longeth to see over the top of the hill before he be halfway up it.” The man who is listening to him confesses that he has often felt that way himself! And I do not know that there are many of us who can claim to be guiltless in this respect. Yet
