Skip to main content

Are you near-sighted?

 Don’t brashly announce what you’re going to do tomorrow; you don’t know the first thing about tomorrow. (Proverbs 27:1)

Gandhi reminded us that we are to "live as if we were to die tomorrow; learn as if we were to live forever". We can be certain of one thing - tomorrow is not promised to any living creature - it is a gift to receive each day we are given. I have a little harder question to pose that may not make fans of many of my followers, but here goes: What will you do with your today in order to make someone else's tomorrow better? I didn't ask what you would do today to make YOUR tomorrow better, but what will you do with TODAY in order to leave a bit of a legacy for someone else's tomorrow. 

I think we spend a whole lot of time today preparing for OUR tomorrow should we blessed to receive another day on this earth, but do we spend OUR time in a way that assures someone we may not even know will be receiving a better tomorrow - a blessing prepared today for reception tomorrow? It could be we give of our time at a local food bank, preparing the food boxes for those who will stand in need tomorrow. We could be giving of our time making lap blankets for the many elderly who sit long hours in their wheelchairs or recliners. We might find ourselves in the backyard shop, cutting out small toys for the homeless children in our area. It doesn't matter 'what' we do - it is that we are investing in someone else's tomorrow. 

If we aren't assured of any tomorrows, why do we spend so much time focusing on what our tomorrows will look like? If we are honest, we have become a little 'myopic' (a fancy word for being a little too 'near-sighted'). We focus a whole bunch on our future, but not as much figuring out a way to make another's tomorrow even greater than our own. I have to wear glasses because my physical eyes are near-sighted, but I don't want my heart to become near-sighted, so I have to guard against that happening! There are no 'corrective lenses' for a myopic heart - but there is grace! God doesn't just put a temporary 'fix' in place to 'correct' our heart's near-sighted condition. He uses grace to transform it! Just sayin!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for leaving a comment if this message has spoken to your heart.

Popular posts from this blog

What did obedience cost Mary and Joseph?

As we have looked at the birth of Christ, we have considered the fact he was born of a virgin, with an earthly father so willing to honor God with his life that he married a woman who was already pregnant.  In that day and time, a very taboo thing.  We also saw how the mother of Christ was chosen by God and given the dramatic news that she would carry the Son of God.  Imagine her awe, but also see her tremendous amount of fear as she would have received this announcement, knowing all she knew about the time in which she lived about how a woman out of wedlock showing up pregnant would be treated.  We also explored the lowly birth of Jesus in a stable of sorts, surrounded by animals, visited by shepherds, and then honored by magi from afar.  The announcement of his birth was by angels - start to finish.  Mary heard from an angel (a messenger from God), while Joseph was set at ease by a messenger from God on another occasion - assuring him the thing he was about to do in marrying Mary wa
Post a Comment
Read more

A brilliant display indeed

Love from the center of who you are ; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply ; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. (Romans 12:9-12) Integrity and Intensity don't seem to fit together all that well, but they are uniquely interwoven traits which actually complement each other. "Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it." God asks for us to have some intensity (fervor) in how we love (from the center of who we are), but he also expects us to have integrity in our love as he asks us to be real in our love (don't fake it). They are indeed integral to each other. At first, we may only think of integrity as honesty - some adherence to a moral code within. I believe there is a little more to integrity than meets the eye. In the most literal sense,
Post a Comment
Read more

Do me a favor

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. (Philippians 2:1-4) Has God's love made ANY difference in your life? What is that difference? Most of us will likely say that our lives were changed for the good, while others will say there was a dramatic change. Some left behind lifestyles marked by all manner of outward sin - like drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, or even thievery. There are many that will admit the things they left behind were just a bit subtler - what we can call inward sin - things like jealousy,
Post a Comment
Read more