A New Day

   Each morning I try to remember to say a short prayer before getting out of bed.  Just a simple thanks for the rest given me during the night and the hope that I can follow His will throughout the new day.

   This morning it struck me that it truly is a new day.  A day that has never existed before and will never come again.  I can use the day with a purpose or just drift through as if it doesn’t matter.  Sadly I sometimes think I am so confident that there will always be another day that I don’t realize the importance of the one I am living at this moment.

   We often say things that indicate we believe we have unlimited time available to us.  We talk as if we control our future though we have no future beyond what God gives us.  We make plans for the years to come when we can’t even be sure of the next second.

   Those of us who are older might remember Tennessee Ernie Ford’s television show.  Each week he closed the show with the comment that he would be back next week “if the good Lord is willing and the creek don’t rise.”  We should certainly plan for our future.  But our plans must include the knowledge that they may or may not come to be.  Our plans should be tempered with the thought that everything is subject to God’s will for it is only through His will that we have a future to plan.

   With each new day God gives us the chance to move on from the past and begin anew.  That chance is ours to use or to ignore.  May we take the opportunity offered and live each day in God’s will.

Father, I thank You for this new day.

I thank You for the many blessings You have given me.

May I live this day and every day according to Your will.

Amen