Before me there is a blank page. The blank page represents the start of a new day. Each of us is issued one page at a time. Many are the pages of my previous days, most are filled with little that is remarkable or noteworthy to anyone else, but hopefully, few are scrawled with things that are worthless. How can we make today’s page worthwhile, good and beneficial?
The Bible offers us the best answer to this question in Philippians 4:6-9 (New Living Translation): “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me – everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.”
Let us begin filling in the verbiage of our day’s page with prayer instead of worry. Prayer will center our life on the blessings, power, and abundant provisions of Almighty God. God delights in turning our needs into praise and thankfulness. Prayer sets the nib of our pen to write an order for the day that pirouettes across the page in the graceful calligraphy of peace that surpasses the bounds of thought and imagination. Worry would cramp, cripple, scratch, scrawl, and blot across our page obliterating joy and beauty with its greedy, insatiable contest to conquer and capture all the light and focus of the day.
Instead, prayer invites God’s serene protection to infuse, saturate, and seal the day’s page with His loving presence. From there we can pen that day’s page with the clarity that comes from the light and abundant life Christ delivers. The story you write that day should answer the following questions. What purpose will my day serve? Who will I help today? Will I do things that are good for me today? Will my choices continually turn toward pleasing God today?
To inscribe a worthy day, we are counseled to focus and fix our intentions on things that are God’s truth, that honor God and others appropriately, and are morally and biblically right, just, and good. Further, we must ruminate on subject matter that promotes purity that accords with holiness and is therefore beautiful and promotes the betterment of others with blessing and wholesomeness. Moreover, make the theme of your day noble, exceptional, and incomparably superb by loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself.
That is the subject matter that makes for a compelling day. A book of such days makes an astounding life. That’s not merely the kind of book I want to read, it’s the kind of book I want to write with my life. How about you?
Contact Pastor Lamb at icumc@yahoo.com.
