If any one of us knows a word of hope or has picked up a message of
comfort anywhere, it is his plain duty to share it, these days. We owe
it to each other to cherish as exceeding precious, and to pass on to
others, every brave and helpful word or thought we come across.
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.
Why, my brothers, if God our Father had meant us to carry on our backs
the fears and anxieties of the coming days, He would surely have told us
more about them! If we were meant to bear to-day what next week holds,
surely we should have been permitted to see into next week. But we
cannot. We cannot see a single second ahead. God gives us Now, and
To-Morrow He keeps to Himself. Is there anything wiser or better we can
do with our to-morrows than just to leave them quietly and trustfully
with Him?
The habit of living ahead, as so many of us do, prevents us from getting
the full taste and flavour of the happiness and blessing that are ours
to-day. I defy any man to be adequately grateful for this day's
sunshine if he is worrying all the time about the chance of a bad day
to-morrow. Mark Rutherford, merciless self-critic as he was, takes
himself severely to task for this habit in his "Autobiography." "I
learned, alas! when it was almost too late," he says, "to live in each
moment as it passed over my head, believing that the sun as it is now
rising, is as good as it ever will be." Yes, in great things as well as
in little things, that is true. If we are to live our lives at the
full, and anywhere on the Christian level, the only way is to live one
day at a time.
Our forefathers in the pulpit were fond of reminding their hearers to
live each day as if it were their last. And in solemn truth, without
being in the least morbid, that is the way to live. If a man knew that
after to-day, he would not smell the sea again, how fully and gratefully
would he fill his lungs with its ozone to-day! If he knew he were not
to enter God's House again, how earnestly and sincerely and reverently
he would join in its worship to-day! Yes, but the point is, why should
his hope, that he has other days to come, prevent him taking out of this
day all that he possibly can? Why should this day be any less prized,
because others in all probability will follow it?
But the great value of this word is the comfort of it to those who are
anxious and fear the coming days. And which of us is not in that
category? I do not suppose there is one of my readers upon whom,
somehow or other, the war has not levied its tax. Nearly every one has
somebody belonging to him or her who is in this gigantic struggle, and
whose welfare is a matter of real concern. And, closer still, there are
fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, whose very dearest are "in
it" or are getting ready to do their share. They have joined, and we
are proud that they have joined, for this is a cause that ennobles every
mother's son who fights for it. But who shall say what the mother's
thoughts are, these days? How proud, and justly proud, the father is
that his boy has played the man, and offered himself to his King and for
his country! But only God, who made the father--and the mother--heart,
knows what the surrender costs. And only God knows how eagerly and
anxiously they look ahead to try to see what the future may hold.
And, knowing that, He sends His comfort to you, fathers and mothers. The
comfort of His promise,--As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Just a
day at a time, my friend! Do not take fears for next month on your
shoulders now. You will get strength given you for to-day, certain and
sure, and when next month comes, the strength and comfort for that day
will come too, as certain and as sure. Be not over-anxious about the
morrow. Leave your to-morrow, and your soldier-son, in God's hands.
You can do nothing more at the best, and this is the best. But it is
such a mistake to do anything less. Leave all your to-morrows with
God--it is what He wants you to do--and humbly and gratefully take from
His hands His gift of To-day, and the strength that comes with it. If
that be not enough--and it is not enough for God has said more--when
that is not enough, still your heart a moment, and listen! And you will
hear, beneath that promise for to-day, like the grand deep tones of an
organ, the magnificent diapason of the Father's constant love and
mindfulness,--"The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the
everlasting arms." And surely that is enough!
"So for To-morrow and its needs
I do not pray,
But keep me, guide me, help me, Lord,
Just for To-Day."