#192 THE TIME IT IS TODAY 9-26-26
Here is the sobering truth about today. Yesterday has already become history, and tomorrow has not yet arrived. We stand between the two with twenty-four hours in our hands that we have never possessed before and will never possess again. The Bible does not teach us to live carelessly in the present or anxiously in the future. It teaches us to recognize the gift and responsibility of the moment God has placed before us.
Psalm 118:24 teaches us, “This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” Notice the tense. This is the day. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Today.
There are things God may call us to do tomorrow, but there are things He has placed directly in front of us today. The great question is whether we will recognize them.
TREASURE THE MOMENT
We often fail to appreciate today because we are living somewhere else in our minds. We replay yesterday, wishing we could change what happened. Or we live in tomorrow, imagining what might happen. Meanwhile, today quietly passes through our hands.
Jesus taught His disciples to live with a proper view of the present. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34).
That does not mean tomorrow is unimportant. It means tomorrow is not ours yet.
Today is.
There are people we can encourage today. There are prayers we can pray today. There are sins we can forsake today. There is good we can do today. There is someone who may need to hear about Jesus today.
“See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15–16).
Time is not merely something we spend. It is something we steward.
TURN TO GOD
The Bible repeatedly connects the present moment with a response to God. “Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 3:7-8).
That is remarkable. God speaks, and the appropriate response is not someday. It is today.
We can postpone almost anything. We can delay a conversation. We can put off a visit. We can reschedule an appointment. But spiritual procrastination is dangerous because the heart can become accustomed to saying no.
When Zacchaeus heard that Jesus was passing through Jericho, he did not say, “Perhaps I will meet Him another time.” He climbed a tree. Jesus called his name. Zacchaeus came down, received Jesus joyfully, and his life began to change (Luke 19:1–10).
The opportunity came, and he responded.
Jesus once stood outside Jerusalem and wept over a people who had failed to recognize their moment. He said, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace!” (Luke 19:42).
“In this your day.”
God puts things directly before us in the present. A door opens. A heart becomes tender. A person needs help. An opportunity for service appears. A soul needs the gospel.
We must learn to recognize the holy possibilities hidden inside ordinary days.
TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY
James gives us a needed correction to our plans for tomorrow. He describes people who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit” (James 4:13).
Their problem was not planning. Their problem was presumption. “You do not know what will happen tomorrow” (James 4:14). Then he gives the proper perspective: “Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that’” (James 4:15).
That puts today in its proper place.
We make plans, but God gives us time. We make schedules, but God gives us opportunities. We make appointments, but God can interrupt them with divine appointments.
And James concludes with words that ought to make us uncomfortable in the best possible way: “Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin” (James 4:17).
Sometimes the sin is not something we did.
Sometimes it is something we knew we should do and simply refused to do.
The time is today.
Not because tomorrow does not matter, but because today is the only portion of tomorrow that has become our possession. Today we can love someone. Today we can forgive. Today we can serve. Today we can speak. Today we can pray. Today we can obey.
Jesus said, “I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day” (John 9:4). There will come a night when our opportunities on this earth are finished. Until then, the light is shining, the door is open, and the work remains.
So treasure today.
Turn to God today.
Take the opportunity today.
The time is not merely coming.
The time is today.
BDD
