Day 3566 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 6:34 NIV

It seems as though that all these worries we know are known only in regard to tomorrow as such is, for today at least, the last place in which all uncertainty still lies in life.

For it feels, to us, that yesterday is now mostly gone, aside from a few remnants of things then left undone. And too, that today is already but well underway and we can, in that, imagine easily that we’ll make it through the rest. But tomorrow, no, tomorrow holds not that same certainty as we see now in yesterday nor assume easily seen within the rest of today. And thus tomorrow is where we feel our worries best waiting, the weight of a billion unknowns all coming at once once the sun goes down and dares rise again to reveal what lies within the coming unknown that is tomorrow.

And yet, as we’ve been discussing of late, what if we could see that all that lies alongside said uncertainty was simply the fact that even that was in itself a lie?

Because, and even beyond the numbskullery of our never having yet having learned to trust beyond yesterday, we’ve become in that unable or even perhaps unwilling to admit that today is, at least in parts, a lie all our own. For it feels as if at least part of each and every day is otherwise destroyed by what we cannot even begin to either miss or manifest within the tomorrows that as of now are not here yet.

For such is simply all that our every worry really is, just us trying in vain to either forgo the pain or purchase the prize ahead of time.

Is this not why we so worry always mostly about mostly tomorrow? After all, it does indeed make some sense to sort of move on from all our yesterdays at some point as we eventually give into this gravity of life not going that a way. Granted, even this is a matter that seems to take some time to make sense of itself unto us who’ve long held tight that which has now fallen behind in the ticking away of a life’s time, both because perhaps we wish to still learn from all that we want not to repeat and too because we’re still trying to keep denying and hiding all the lessons we left unlearned back then.

But even then we eventually allow such reality to get through, all the faults and failures about which there’s still nothing today we can do. And when it does, and yesterday is then finally more gone than it had seemed, only then are we more able to move on to worrying about today’s wants and wearies. And as this becomes our focus, our priority, our misery mainly, then and only then do we find that we’re, having unlearned all that we left unloved in yesterday’s journeys, only then do we see that we’re entirely unready to deal with today’s.

And yet we kind of just do anyways as that is how life has come to go.

Because such is just the way life goes. It’s something confined into the “I’m doing alright’s” and “can’t complain’s” and “how’s the weather anyways, see that ball game”? It’s the reason for this noise we seem content to pretend we enjoy. Yes, all this small talk otherwise drowns out the thoughts we’re either unready or unwilling to think. For we know what might await were we to wander into today’s weight of wonder.

But, then again, what does wonder weigh?

For days now we’ve been talking how to go about our maybe finding out as to the weight of a worry, and too of the many wants which give them such a gravity. But what about a wonder? For in truth it seems as if wondering is something that’s suffered a quite violent disservice across our years given thus far to staying so disillusioned. For our lives, as having so long been lived in such disagreement between yesterday having worked out okay and our fear that tomorrow won’t go that way, we’ve rather dissolved into a quite disagreeable difference of opinion in regard to the whole deal.

Such is why we steal time both from yesterday and mostly from tomorrow. We do this every time we give way to worry about what’s either already over or what may never even begin. And as we do let that lesson of the past begin to sink in which says that there’s no point in worrying about yesterday, and as we in that find ourselves already well into today and thus find in the fleeting hours still ahead less to worry about than we did this morning, well, seems we simply shuffle our concerns on into tomorrow.

Thus stealing from yesterday a lesson that we leave unlearned still even today as we do the same as we did back then and worry more about the unknown than the presently knowable.

And why is this? Why do we so continue to agree to feel bad about yesterday for sake of all the mistakes it saw us make, and yet do nothing new today but rather give way again into worrying about tomorrow? For you see, today is but yesterday’s tomorrow, and yet thus far has it turned out that any of our worries had then have materialized into the monsters we imagined them to be? Or is rather today but the same kind of mediocrity that we gave yesterday to become?

For that’s the only outcome that can come when we so agree to do so little within a day outside of worrying ourselves weary over the next.

Yet we do just this. We wake up only to hurry into the storms we’ve drawn within the doubts of yesterday, and as they somehow fail to form and blow in as we then assumed they would, we find this lack of struggle as so often known in life to have then freed us to worry about tomorrow. And while inside all this we could so easily see that if our lives are indeed so freed of struggle and strife that we’ve otherwise all this time to spend today worrying about tomorrow, well then our lives ain’t all that bad, are they?

Alas, such is the lesson left so often unlearned and then left to the past. Because we’ve become convinced that our lives are this burden that we simply cannot bear, and so we stay never here, never now, never thankful about how all this is so taken care of that our worries have mostly never come around. No, we just continue to think that this day is already just bound to stink, and rather than suffer through the assumed suck, we just decide to worry about tomorrow instead.

Just because it’ll always feel better to ignore this today that we built up into a monstrosity yesterday than to open our eyes to realize that we ain’t got much to worry about after all.

But who has time for that when we’re so used to living a life lost in the weight of worry, never there allowed to wonder into the joy of a life that’s not nearly as miserable as we’ve so made it seem. No, we’re otherwise quite grateful for the gravity in which we gloat as these ghouls who go about their days as if life’s a grave with then nothing much to say, not much good at least. Such is the reason for all the small talk and distraction we design. It’s just there to keep us from seeing that we’ve neither got it bad nor then have anything to worry about.

We just want to.

For it’s what the world’s taught us to. This place is shaken daily inside this doubt and denial of how life is still working out okay. May not be perfect, might not be easy, we may face a fear here or there, but we’re still alive aren’t we? And as we are, well, you’d think we’d learn to just be thankful for such a gift as what is a new day neither burdened by what has been nor may what may never be. But no, no we spend today doing the same as we did yesterday, thinking up all the ways in which tomorrow will let us down or bring around some bout or barricade to the better day we’d otherwise really like for once.

As if we’ve never had a good day before.

And why is that? Why is it, or rather how is it that we’ve come around to all this living and acting and pretending as if we’ve had nothing but problems every day of our life? Do we truly not know what a good day is like? Or have we just convinced ourselves, confined ourselves to seeing the bad we need to be there so that yesterday isn’t now proven so wasted for our having given it to worrying about what’s not happening today? For I contend that yesterday was as good as every other. Must just be our eyes or hearts or minds are otherwise unable to have seen it that way.

And if that is the case, our inability to see the good in our days, well then who’s to blame? Is it not that we cannot know good unless and until we agree that it’s always been there just beyond our begrudgement? Indeed, don't we know that we can never know just how good our lives really are, and have always been, if we don't do as we're here told? Do not worry about tomorrow. Let today be enough. Enjoy this gift and let the next be there is He so wills.

Indeed, in other places we read that we’re called to lay all our anxiety on Him, because in truth, the things we worry about or want for, they're not actually able to matter all that much. Are they? For the fact is friends that our every want is as fleeting as our every fear. And this is something each of us have felt thus far, more times than we can count in fact. Because it seems that within each day we get something we like, we endure something we don't. And yet either way, by the next day, the next month, it's over.

Why worry about anything then?

If it’s all going to become what the past has proven to be, and just over, a matter made now into what is but a memory, well then why not just do, as again we're so clearly here told to, and just let each day be enough? Why not let today’s struggles be the things we focus on, learn from, fail to take for granted perhaps? For indeed, each day has enough trouble and triumph of its own. Why can we never let this be enough? Why not enjoy the gifts and too insist that we don’t let the heavy feel so weighty? Why can’t we just let that be enough, whatever today’s ‘that’ might happen to be?

Because, again as we could have and thus should have learned from yesterday not having proven as troubling as we likely imagined the day before, all we’re doing within all this worrying is just losing a today all over again. And this seems a true tragedy considering the kindness and patience, compassion and forgiveness that it must have taken for Him to give us another go at this. And yet, friends, our trying to either add to it or take from it, it's just a futile foolishness that will only prevent our peace. As it always has in the past!

Which is why He asks us here to just let today be enough.

For despite all the dangers and theirs doubts that we’ve spent so much time fighting to design, truth is that there’s as much potential for peace within each day as there is problem or pain. And so why continue to imagine only the worst, especially when the best is so easily seen? We can see His evidence, right? All this evidence of His presence? In the peace? In the calm? In the quiet and hopeful, those most rare of moments in which we just watch the sunset and refuse to give in to worrying about what awaits beyond it?

Because who cares?

For if He’s here with us today, then He will too be there still tomorrow. And if this is the case, as our every breath proves it is, well then again, why worry about any of it? Has He not gotten us through every day thus far? We think He’s just going to slip up, forget us, forsake us even though He never has? Just expecting Him to have an off day, kind of like all these that we’ve somehow stumbled upon as if nothing but excuses for not focusing on what actually matters?

Don't keep doing that my friends. Why? Well, what has it ever done for us? What have our worries ever really amounted to? Have any of our fears proven as fatal as we imagined they might? Has not the sun still come to end every single hard, sleepless night? Does not the sun set at a day’s close, signing off on His keeping us close? Why do we still assume that somehow something’ll change by this time tomorrow, so drastically even that we might not make it to this time tomorrow?

He doesn't want that for us, all this dreaming up disasters and designing a future that’s so fearful and failing forsake it before we ever even see it. Instead He calls us to trust Him. But friends, how can we say we can when we’re worried about what we cannot possibly see? Does He need our help? Does He need our plans? Or does He rather just ask that we leave tomorrow in His hands and in that simply find, finally, the ability to appreciate today for all the hardship and happiness it holds?

My point is that as this is indeed the day the Lord has given, and in that one that He never asked us to give over to want or worry, we need to wonder why we keep welcoming them anyway. And if we say we don’t, as even our own doubt tries so often to doubt itself, well then what of all this fretting over what we may or may not find, feel, fail come tomorrow? Is our life truly so messy that we can afford to forsake today so that we can try, in vain, to get ahead of what we can only assume is coming then?

It shouldn’t be this way. And that, if for nothing else, because the truth is that one day we won’t have another tomorrow here. And sure, we can play the odds and pretend it won’t happen for a while because it hasn’t as of yet. But, folks, that’s not ours to say. No, this day is ours to say. This day is ours to take, to make, to fail to again forsake as we’ve done so many before. But what are we saying this day? Are we saying that we appreciate it, living as if it might be our last?

Or are we again just worrying about tomorrow and in that missing all that today still holds?

Sure, there will always be both pleasure and pain so long as we’re living within this land. But, even then, it’s up to us which we choose to focus on. We’ve done it one way more often than the other, but to what? What has worry ever won? Seems all that worry has ever done is steal our joy and convince us that we’ll tomorrow still have none. How is that life?

No, I think He’s created this all a little better than that. We just have to stop falling for this lie of an idea that has us convinced that today is best spent worrying about tomorrow, because we’re simply missing too much because of it.

So leave tomorrow for tomorrow as we’ve only today for today.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold