by Rev Douglas Brauner

The importance of today

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
Matthew 6:34 New Living Translation

Happy New Year!!!

To one degree or another, you and I have been thinking both about the past and about the future as we enter 2018. That’s what we do when the calendar turns from one year to the next.

As we reflect on the past year there are both good things and not so good things that happened. There are relationships that blossomed and others that faded away. There are things that we have gained and things that we have lost. It has been my experience that the deeper things fade into the past the more out of focus they become.

We not only reflect on the past, but we also dream about the future. Along with our New Year resolutions we’ve probably set some goals that we’d like to accomplish in the coming year. However, the future is about as clear as the past.

It’s not wrong to reflect on the past or dream about the future. In fact these can be healthy activities. But we cannot forget about the present. My vision for this picture before I pressed the shutter button was to have both the foreground and background a little out of focus, but not the middle.

The middle of this picture represents the present. Jesus calls us to focus on today in the Sermon on the Mount. Today is what matters. Yes, today is dependent on the past and looks to the future, but today is the only day that we live. We are called to focus on Jesus today, to receive his mercy and grace to thrive in the day. We are called to live as his people today.

Today is what we have.

“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Colossians 3:17 English Standard Version

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado