A Day at a Time, and Other Talks on Life and ReligionAlexander, Archibald
Religion
A Day at a Time, and Other Talks on Life and Religion
Alexander, Archibald
Sermons, English
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 to-morrow 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 to-morrow,
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 to-day. He was dead against the practice of adding to the burdens
of to-day fears and forebodings for to-morrow. 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 half-way 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 it is perfectly plain that the men
and women who are living the bravest and most successful lives around
us, and are proving towers of strength to others, are those who have
learned the art of living just a day at a time, and of depending upon
God for strength for that day in the simplest and most trustful fashion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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