Living for Today (cont’d.)

Matthew 6:34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.

Let me speak now to those who fear tomorrow.  I guess my ideas are shaped by my past, as many people’s are.  I lost my mother in a car accident when I was nine years old.  As I became an adult, my thoughts about the future all seem to end in some horrible tragedy.  How my boys might have to grow up without a mother. I worried that somewhere along the line I would receive a phone call that a loved one had been taken in a tragedy.  And after a while, I realized that was no way to live.  I lived in fear.  Fear of everything.  It became so overwhelming that I couldn’t function.  Then I read Jeremiah 29:11.  For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.  When I find myself backpedaling to a life of fear (that is lived out only in my mind), I have to remind myself that His thoughts toward me are of peace, and not evil.  I have to trust Him, and trust Him completely.  Partial trust is still a lack of faith. 

How many times have you fretted yourself or worried over things that might happen?  I’ll raise both hands there!  It’s so easy in our human reasoning to try and worry the problem away.  Maybe if we worry about it now it will somehow dissolve the situation in some mystical, magical way.  But we know it doesn’t work that way.  Worry is like a disease that destroys our today-the today in which we must live-so that we can feel better about the tomorrow-at which we never arrive.  I’ve read a saying, as I’m sure you have, too, that says, “Don’t worry about tomorrow-God is already there.”  He is.  What a comforting feeling, that no matter what my worries are for today, even if they come true, God is already there and knows how He will handle the situation.  The more we trust that God is in control, the more peace we will find; because in all honesty, worry is nothing more than a lack of faith.   Ouch. 

Just for today, I will live my life in complete faith, knowing that God is in control.