Making "Today" Your Own!

How do you spend the blessed currency of time? Do you have a “pocketful” of day or have you “spent” your day already? “Today” is the most important time for each one of us because it is all we have been given! We are not promised next year, next month, next week, or even tomorrow. Today is important because it is when we can make the “choice” to obey, to encourage a brother or sister, to take the first step in living a life for Christ; to find one’s life in losing it (Luke 9:24).

James says that our lives are as a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away (James 4:14). Life is like a vapor, which is but for a moment. Like the morning fog, it vanishes in the heat of the sun. A day in your earthly life is a valuable and precious gift because it is soon over. Sin may deceive us by telling us, “You’ve got time”. Therefore, the inspired writer of the book of Hebrews tells us to “exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13).

The saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” means that intending to take care of important duties at a future time is the pathway to eternal ruin. Though we plan to do something good (study the Bible, obey the gospel, teach the lost, call a discouraged brother or sister, visit the sick, minister to the needy) our hectic schedules crowd out our good intentions. We may forget that there will not always be a “tomorrow” (see here).

We are not promised tomorrow. “Today” is all we have. James gives us instructions on what our attitude should be concerning “Tomorrow”: “For that you ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. Therefore, to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:15-17 KJV). We must, like the five wise virgins, make preparations for the Lord’s second coming. Will Jesus find us “watching” and “waiting”? (Matthew 25:13).

Beloved, regarding the “day” .... let us imitate the saints of the first century of whom it is said, “And every day, in the temple and at home, they ceased not to teach and to preach Jesus as the Christ” (Acts 5:42 ASV).

—Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets