Matthew 6:34

ONE DAY AT A TIME

‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow.’

Matthew 6:34

The Revised Version has it, ‘Be not anxious for the morrow’; but, even so, this is one of the words of the Lord which absolutely startle us with the greatness of their claim. This is one of the words which brings it home to us how great and strenuous a matter it is to be a Christian man. ‘Be not anxious for the morrow’; yet we remember that all the world, beginning with ourselves, seems to be clouded over with a great anxiety.

Subtle as the temptation is to worry and to be anxious, there is no question that it is a quite different temper which the Christian man is bidden and expected to learn. There is no question about the Lord’s phrase; there is no question for the Christian man about the absolute disloyalty of worry and anxiety.

But there are two things which are necessary if this conviction of the Providence of God is to become a reality for us.

I. The mastery of Christ.—We must accept the mastery of Jesus. It is to His disciples that He brings peace. Are we disciples?

II. Live one day at a time.—‘Be not anxious for the morrow,’ for, after all, it is only to-day that we have to live. We look forward and try and think out how we will act, and to-morrow it is all so different, and meanwhile we have exhausted the nerve and we have used the energy, which God intended to give us anew for the fresh day’s work. There was no gathering of the manna for more than one day at a time. The word of Christ comes back to the disciple, and it is a question whether we will be loyal.

The Rev. H. P. Cronshaw.

Illustration

‘Every Christian is, or ought to be, in that state respecting his sins, that he has nothing to do except with the sins of the current day. As soon as he was converted he was justified; in other words, the very time when he first felt real faith and repentance, all the sins which he had ever committed from his childhood, up to that period, were freely and fully, and perfectly cancelled. He was washed—clean as snow. From that time, he “needeth not save to wash his feet.” Each day, therefore, he brings the guilt which he has been accumulating since last he prayed, and lays it at the foot of the cross; to be cleansed in the same fountain. But this is all he has to do with it. It needs not to be passed to a current account; for a debt once paid is never again due. Neither need he be thinking of the sins and transgressions into which he may, and into which he will fall again—because to-morrow’s guilt will find to-morrow’s grace. He has only to feel penitently, and cast the day’s burden where, surely, alone it can be laid—where the burden of other days has been cast. Oh! what a happy lot is theirs, who having nothing between them and God but the sins of the day; who, knowing the past is all forgiven, and that they have the same grace to fall back upon when it is needed, can say, “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” ’