We’ve all heard the admonition to Seize the Day. It inspires us to make the most of our time, focus on productivity and take every opportunity. Given my “type A” personality I’ve always believed this to be good advice. But as I consider the thorny problems in my life right now, I’m thinking of revising this familiar saying to “Don’t seize the day, Embrace it.”
Embrace the Problem
God calls me to receive and act on the love he has shown me. When I fully live out that faith, my heart is warm toward God and gentle toward my neighbors. In the spirit of this calling, I am eager to follow the instructions of Colossians 3:23 “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.” And I have, or at least I think I have followed that command. When I hear about another’s difficulty, I jump to propose a solution. If my resources are stretched thin, I’m usually ready to cut the slices a little thinner in order to spread things around.
But “work at it with all your heart” doesn’t really work if I’ve lost focus, or I think that my own effort is all I need. Psalm 127:1 reminds me that “unless the Lord builds the house its builders labor in vain.” An increasingly polarized world, global conflict, serious illness in my family, and a general sense of anger in the air have humbled me. Lately, as I’ve tried to solve some of my problems, my interventions only seemed to make things worse. I’ve found myself with the rare temptation to say, “Don’t seize the day, Squander it with binge TV.” But naming the problem is better than hiding behind reruns of Downton Abbey.
Embrace your Limitations
This got me thinking about the lovely children’s book Skylark by Patricia MacLachlan. The heroine, Sarah, has moved from coastal Maine to a Kansas prairie to marry a widower and become the new mother of his children. Sarah is used to a fishing village and Atlantic storms. When a drought comes to Kansas, she rolls up her sleeves and channels her “Can Do.” spirit.
As friends’ farms dry up and families reluctantly relinquish their homesteads, Sarah fights back, “You can’t just give up!” she cries. Her best friend, Maggie faces her in anger, “You don’t know how hard this is…you haven’t been in this kind of trouble before!” Having corrected her friend, Maggie embraces Sarah and tries to explain. Meanwhile the stepson asks his sister, “Is Sarah angry?” “No” his sister replies. Taking in the situation, the stepson concludes, “Sarah likes to make things right.”
I like to make things right too. But there are problems that neither Sarah nor I can solve.
Embrace the Day, Day by Day
I love the hymn Day by Day. It reminds us that:
“Every day, the Lord himself is near me,
With a special mercy for each hour.”
Matthew 7:34 explains why this mercy is so necessary, “Each day has enough trouble of its own.” But the hymn goes on to dissuade me of my temptation to seize that day and turn those troubles upside down. The second verse assures me that:
“The protection of his child and treasure
Is a charge that on himself he laid:
‘As thy days, they strength shall be in measure,’
This the pledge to me he made.”
My instinct is to grab the trouble by the throat and wrestle it to the ground. But if I do, more times than not, I’ll interfere with the provision that God is making for my protection. Instead, he invites me to rest in his faithfulness to me, and to trust that he will keep the charge that he has laid on himself. As I unclasp my grasping hand to leave the day to him, my hand is open to embrace the gifts that each day will bring.
Living Faith*Fully makes it possible to embrace the day I’m living and to pray the prayer of the final stanza:
“Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,
E’er to take, as from a father’s hand, one by one, the days the moments fleeting,
Till I reach the promised land.”
Translated by AL Skoog; Author Carolina Sandell