Friday, October 31, 2008

Today and the Rest of Your Life

In The Covenant Home Altar this morning, Randolph Thompson, pastor of Community Covenant Church in Calumet Park, Illinois, had a sentence that is worth both repeating and pondering. Reflecting on Deuteronomy 34 and the story of Moses’ last days, when the Lord let him see from the heights the whole of the Promised Land before taking him home, my pastor brother wrote: “When you look at your day, try to see it as one day that comes together with the rest of your life to help you reach your destination.”

Why is it, I thought on reading both the Scripture and the meditation, that we spend so much of our time and energy every day as if what really mattered were tomorrow and the next day and the next? Surely we need always to be thinking ahead, yet failing to use this day, today, as part of all that—a foretaste of what is yet to be--is probably to miss not only its own meaning but its blessing as well.

To draw a parallel: I have not met my brother Randolph, but today and through this week, given his Home Altar meditations, I now know him nonetheless as a joint heir of all the things we have yet to inherit as members of the Covenant and the larger body of Christ. And because he has reopened my eyes to the importance of today in the scheme of my life, I have written him an email to say thanks and thus hopefully, on the same day, bless and lend perspective to him.

“When you are converted,” Scripture says, “strengthen your brothers and sisters.”And do it “more and more as you see the Day approaching.” On this day, then, without neglecting whatever larger vision the Lord may be supplying you, seize the opportunity to see the hours given you as an integral part of “the rest of your life to help you reach your destination.”