Why, my brothers, if God our Father had meant us to carry on our backs the fears and anxieties of the coming days, He would surely have told us more about them! If we were meant to bear today what next week holds, surely we should have been permitted to see into next week. But we cannot. We cannot see a single second ahead. God gives us Now, and Tomorrow He keeps to Himself. Is there anything wiser or better we can do with our tomorrows than just to leave them quietly and trustfully with Him?
The habit of living ahead, as so many of us do, prevents us from getting the full taste and flavour of the happiness and blessing that are ours today. I defy any man to be adequately grateful for this day’s sunshine if he is worrying all the time about the chance of a bad day tomorrow. Mark Rutherford, merciless self-critic as he was, takes himself severely to task for this habit in his Autobiography. “I learned, alas! when it was almost too late,” he says, “to live in each moment as it passed over my head, believing that the sun as it is now rising, is as good as it ever will be.” Yes, in great things as well as in little things, that is true. If we are to live our lives at the full, and anywhere on the Christian level, the only way is to live one day at a time.
Our forefathers in the pulpit were fond of reminding their hearers to live each day as if it were their last. And in solemn truth, without being in the least morbid, that is the way to live. If a man knew that after today, he would not smell the sea again, how fully and gratefully would he fill his lungs with its ozone today! If he knew he were not to enter God’s House again, how earnestly and sincerely and reverently he would join in its worship today! Yes, but the point is, why should his hope, that he has other days to come, prevent him taking out of this day all that he possibly can? Why should this day be any less prized, because others in all probability will follow it?
But the great value of this word is the comfort of it to those who are anxious and fear the coming days. And which of us is not in that category? I do not suppose there is one of my readers upon whom, somehow or other, the war has not levied its tax. Nearly everyone has somebody belonging to him or her who is in this gigantic struggle, and whose welfare is a matter of real concern. And, closer still, there are fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, whose very dearest are “in it” or are getting ready to do their share. They have joined, and we are proud that they have joined, for this is a cause that ennobles every mother’s son who fights for it. But who shall say what the mother’s thoughts are, these days? How proud, and justly proud, the father is that his boy has played the man, and offered himself to his King and for his country! But only God, who made the father—and the mother—heart, knows what the surrender costs. And only God knows how eagerly and anxiously they look ahead to try to see what the future may hold.
And, knowing that, He sends His comfort to you, fathers and mothers. The comfort of His promise—As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Just a day at a time, my friend! Do not take fears for next month on your shoulders now. You will get strength given you for today, certain and sure, and when next month comes, the strength and comfort for that day will come too, as certain and as sure. Be not overanxious about the morrow. Leave your tomorrow, and your soldier-son, in God’s hands. You can do nothing more at the best, and this is the best. But it is such a mistake to do anything less. Leave all your tomorrows with God—it is what He wants you to do—and humbly and gratefully take from His hands His gift of Today, and the strength that comes with it. If that be not enough—and it is not enough for God has said more—when that is not enough, still your heart a moment, and listen! And you will hear, beneath that promise for today, like the grand deep tones of an organ, the magnificent diapason of the Father’s constant love and mindfulness—“The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” And surely that is enough!
“So for Tomorrow and its needs
I do not pray,
But keep me, guide me, help me, Lord,
Just for Today.”
Prayer
O Lord our God, who dost appoint the way for each of us, give us the grace to trust that as Thou hast helped us hitherto, so, in Thy great mercy, Thou wilt bless us still. We do not ask to see the distant scene. Keep us, and our beloved, this day; and in quietness and confidence teach us to leave tomorrow with Thee, our Father. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
II
God in the Wheels
“The Spirit of life was in the wheels.”
Ezekiel 1:21
The prophet Ezekiel once had an extraordinary vision of God. He tries to tell us about it, but his description seems to be a meaningless jumble of cherubim, and wheels—wheels within wheels, complex, wonderful, unresting. Behind all, he saw the Glory of God. And again and
