Living by the Day
“My house was well built,” said a farmer once to me, “for it was built by the day.” That is the way in which the best, strongest and happiest lives are built; they are not constructed “by the job,” but one attainment in grace is laid upon another like the blocks of granite in a solid house wall. Each day brings its duty to be done, its temptation to be met and conquered, its burden to be carried and its progress to be made heavenward. There are 365 days in every year, but really there is only one working day, and that is to-day. Sufificient to each day is the evil thereof.
This is just the sort of living that I commend to my readers. God means to shut you up to this style of thinking and planning and doing when he makes his gracious promise, “As thy day so shall thy strength be.” The journey made up a mountain is simply a succession of steps. If the climber attempts to leap upward he exhausts his strength, if he looks down he grows dizzy, and if he looks too far forward he gets discouraged by the distance yet to be surmounted. So in accomplishing each day’s work you have simply to take one step at a time, and to take that wisely is all that you need to think about. Take no anxious thought for the morrow. God never made a Christian strong enough to stand the strain of to-day’s duties and all the load of one’s anxieties piled upon the top of them. Paul himself would have broken down if he had attempted the foolish experiment. We have a right to ask our Heavenly Father for strength equal to the day, but we have no right to ask him for one extra ounce of strength beyond it.
My friend, learn to take short views. If you have money enough to-day for your daily wants, and something over for Christ’s treasury, don’t torment yourself with the idea that you will yet fetch up in the almshouse. If your children cluster around your table to-day, enjoy the music of their voices, train them for God and trust them to God, without racking yourself with a dread that the little ones may be carried off by scarlet fever, or the older ones may fall into bad marriages or some other disaster. Faith carries present loads, meets present assaults, feeds on present promises, and commits the future to a faithful God. Its daily song is:
* ‘Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene: one step enough for me.”
So we exhort you again most earnestly to take short views. Let us not climb the high wall till we get to it, or fight the battle till it opens, or shed tears over sorrows that may never come, or lose the joys and the blessings that we have by the sinful fear that God may take them away from us. We need all the grace that he can give us for to-day’s battles. I would not penetrate into the secrets which to-morrow hides if I could. It is far better to know Whom we trust, and that he is able to keep all that we commit to him until the last great day.
“Why forecast the trials of life
With such sad and grave persistence, And look and watch for a brood of ills That as yet have no existence? “Strength for to-day is all we need, For we never will see to-morrow; When it comes the morrow will be a to-day, With its measure of joy or sorrow.”
The earnest Christian who lives by the day not only faces each duty or each trial as it comes, but he also is on the lookout for each day’s opportunities for serving his Master. Almost every Christian promises himself that some time or other he will be very holy-minded and very useful. The growing, productive Christian is he who is on the watch for opportunities and grasps them when they come. The beautiful morning-glories which opened in my little garden yesterday are all withered away. So with some precious opportunities to serve my Saviour and to do good to my fellow-man — they will never bloom again. But there were fresh flowers that opened with this morning’s sun; even so doth our Master give us a fresh chance to serve him and to bless others every day we live. Here lies the generic difference between profitable and unprofitable Christians. The one class are always looking for opportunities to do a kind act, to gain an influence, to win a soul to Jesus.
The Earl of Shaftesbury in England and William E. Dodge in America were two men whose lives illustrated grandly the principle of grasping every day’s opportunities to strike a blow for Jesus Christ. The holy and heroic Gen. Samuel C. Arm.strong, of Hampton Institute — the noblest benefactor the negro has had, next to Abraham Lincoln — left a remarkable paper, written just before his death, in which he says, “I have never made any sacrifices.” It was joy and ecstasy, the very life of his life, to be doing good; the “sacrifice” would have been to miss the precious opportunity which each day brought him. Harlan Page made it a rule never to talk to any person even for fifteen minutes without saying something helpful
to profit that person’s soul. Our days are very much what we choose to make them. The happy days are those in which we improve the golden occasions, and the most terrible spectre that can haunt us is the ghost of a lost opportunity. That is what will make hell so unendurable to those who fling away Christ’s loving offers and their time for repentance.
With new duties come new supplies of grace every morning to those who seek it by earnest prayer. We cannot live on yesterday’s meals. As the children of Israel gathered fresh manna every morning, so must we look upward for a fresh supply of heavenly “rations” for the day’s march. The early hour is the best for prayer and for feeding on God’s word. That godly-minded Christian, Garret Noel Bleecker of New York, used to go home at noonday not only to take his meal with 7 his family but to have a few quiet moments with his Master. Arthur Tappan had a room up near the roof in his store for noontide devotions. In these times of awful stress and strain on business men, would it not clear their heads and nerve their faith if they would stop, amid the heat of the day’s toil and hurry, to have a few minutes face to face with God?
The secret of happy days is not in our outward circumstances, but in our own heart life. A large draught of Bible taken every morning, a throwing open of the soul’s windows to the precious promises of the Master, a few words of fervent prayer, a deed or two of kindness to the first person you meet, will brighten your countenance and make your feet “like hinds’ feet” for the day’s march. If you want to get your aches and your trials out of sight bury them under your mercies. Begin every day with God, and then, keeping step with your Master, march on toward home over the roughest road, or in face of the hardest winds that blow. Live for Jesus by the day, and on every day, until you come where “the Lamb is the light thereof,” and there is no night there.