One Day At A Time
Sermon
Life Injections
Connecting Scripture to the Human Experience
Object:
... but about that day or hour no one knows...
The expression "one day at a time" is a favorite of twelve-step programs. Its wisdom goes without question.
__________
If I were to ask you whether or not you can eat an elephant, most of you would say: "No!" "It can't be done!" "It's impossible!" "It's ridiculous even to consider it!" Yet the reality is that all of you can eat an elephant. Certainly not all at once, but if you ate small pieces over a long period of time, you could do it. You may not like it, but you could do it.
I'm beginning on a rather crazy note, proposing something preposterous, because the philosophy behind eating an elephant lies behind a clich‚ that has been a great help to a great number of people. It's the clich‚ "one day at a time." To those who are in the throes of a difficult problem or illness, to those who are facing something that seems overwhelming and impossible, one day at a time is the only way to go. One day at a time is the way it can be managed, handled, and overcome.
What I'd like to talk with you about today is living one day at a time. But not so much in deference to the down times of life, but more in terms of how that kind of living keeps us in touch with the wonder and beauty that is ever before us. Great experiences, golden opportunities, unbelievable and exhilarating moments in life often pass us by because we fail to live one day at a time.
An actor had had his day, but he wouldn't believe it. He used to go down to the theater in the morning when it was empty and go through all his popular roles again -- the tragic, the comic -- responding in play action to what he considered to be the breathless attention of the audience. But, of course, there was no audience, there was no curtain to bring down, and there was no applause when the drama was over. The despair which he felt in his own soul was always echoed by the emptiness around him.
We all know people like that. Sometimes we're all a little like that ourselves. We live in yesterday instead of today. We keep looking to yesterday as though it were the only way that life could be lived, assigning to the past the sacredness and the purity that it never really had.
Samuel Johnson once said to an artist who wanted to paint his portrait that he wished to have his face painted "warts and all." Somehow, by a deft process, we remove the warts from the faces of the past, and we glorify it. We idealize circumstances and people and the possibilities that then existed, with little realization that if, by some miracle, we could live in the past, we wouldn't find it all that great, we wouldn't find it all that glorious. There's beauty, there's richness, there's wonder in the "one day of life" that is here right now. But if we choose to live in yesterday, it will all be missed and lost, and our lives will have been denied many wonderful experiences and blessings.
There are also those who are always living in tomorrow, who are letting the "one day at a time" slip through their fingers as they yearn for things yet to come. For example, a little girl is trying to be a young lady, a little boy can't wait to get out of school, a college student thinks of nothing except graduation. You might say to them, "Enjoy your youth! School days are the happiest days of your life!" But it all falls on deaf ears. A business person hangs on for the breakthrough product that will put him on easy street. A middle-aged factory worker lives for Saturday night to see if the lottery number she's chosen will match the ones on the television screen. A couple waits for the time when the mortgage will be paid. An elderly person counts off the days until retirement. In all these cases, the "one day at a time" is blurred because it is a future that they're waiting for. Life is put on hold until there comes that time when what they're waiting for has arrived.
I know a minister who is never in the church that he is in. He's always in the next one, the more prestigious one, the perfect one. So his present congregation receives only a fragment of his love and attention. His head and his heart are somewhere else. Already he's deciding which church will be his new church and what he will do when he gets there.
One can visit a store which has the latest in electronic equipment, the state of the art in stereos, CDs, and cassettes. There will be many who will go there intent on buying something only to end up waiting for the price to be a little cheaper, the quality and texture of the product to be a little better. When the period of waiting is over, they may go there again only to hear a rumor of a whole new method of reproducing sound that will be coming out soon. They wait again. Then they come back and decide to hold out still longer for the real state-of-the-art stereo. All this time is going by when these persons are bereft of listening to any recorded music. The enjoyment of hearing a favorite musician gives way to traveling back and forth to the store.
One of the problems of living in tomorrow is that your life is always being held back. You're not enjoying today because you're waiting for that future time when everything will be right, when the perfect recording machinery can be bought, when the perfect job or church can be had, when all the loose ends of life can be neatly tied. And all the while, there's loveliness around you and under your feet, there's beautiful music being played and you're missing it all.
Living one day at a time carries with it a prescription: stop living in yesterday, stop living in tomorrow, and start living in today.
That, I believe, is the underlying theme of scripture texts traditionally presented in the lectionary during the final Sundays of the Church year. They deal with the end times, and the reality that we will never know the day or the hour when those end times will occur. The somewhat frightening message of Daniel in our first reading and of Jesus in our Gospel are meant to remind us that the tomorrow we're banking on isn't guaranteed, that things can happen which can rob us of our plans, our hopes, our dreams, and even our yesterdays.
One of the vintage Twilight Zone episodes back in the Rod Serling days centered on a short story that has become a classic in many literary circles. I'm referring to "The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." It's the story of a man about to be hanged. Soldiers are leading him to a bridge that spanned a waterway called Owl Creek. In the center of the bridge, the man's hands and feet are tied and a rope, dropped from the top of the bridge, is put around his neck. When everything is ready, the commanding officer barks an order and the condemned man is pushed off the bridge, the rope securely tied to his neck and its end securely tied to the beam. Something strange happens. The rope breaks and the man goes plummeting to the creek far below. As he hits the water, he realizes that he's alive. He works hard to free himself from the rope around his hands, feet, and neck. Swimming quickly to the shore, he's ecstatic. He didn't die! He has a second chance at life! Suddenly, the world around him, all of the nature that circles the shore, takes on a beauty overlooked in the times prior to his walking on the bridge. The blueness of the sky, the arching branches of the trees, the shape of the leaves, the wild flowers, fill him with ecstasy. They've never looked so wonderful. Then a bullet zings through the air and off he runs into the woods. He runs and runs, and soon he sees a house with a white fence around it. As the gate opens, he can't believe his eyes. He's back home again. He then sees his wife running from the front door to meet him. He can't wait to embrace her. Just as he's inches short of this wonderful exchange of love, the camera jarringly takes us back to Owl Creek Bridge. The man who was about to embrace his wife is seen dangling from the bridge, a rope tied around his neck.
The apparent new lease on life had never occurred. It was just something he imagined as he was pushed off the bridge. With death staring him in the eye, the beauty of nature and the love of his wife took on a richer, deeper dimension, spawning a most wonderful dream. But, unfortunately for him, it was just a dream. It was too late to appreciate and relish what was once real.
That is the payoff for living one day at a time. One can come to know and appreciate life before it's too late, before something happens that can make the beautiful things of life only a fleeting dream. Death has robbed too many people of the tomorrow that they longed for, the time they were banking on to enjoy life. Because we never know the day nor the hour of our death or of some illness, it is imperative that we live in the present, that we live for today, that we take life one day at a time.
Dr. Frank Boreham was a distinguished Australian preacher and author. One weekend he was a guest preacher in a distant church, and he stayed overnight in the home of one of the members. Coming downstairs in the morning, he noticed that in the clear glass of the window on the landing were the scriptural words: "This is the day the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it!" At breakfast, he mentioned the unusual window to his hostess, and he found her eager to explain it. She said there was a period in her life when remembrances of the past were paralyzing and the thought of the future terrifying. One day, her eyes fell upon the words of the psalmist: "This is the day the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it!" She came to realize that she had to live one day at a time. When she did so, the past wasn't so paralyzing, the future wasn't so terrifying. She began to notice the beauty around her, the joy that was available to her. So she had the word of the psalmist carved into the window so that she would remind herself every morning of the need to discover the wonder and the excitement of the day that was unfolding before her.
The scripture reading of today and those of next week remind us that life is short and that we never know the day nor the hour when we might find ourselves atop some Owl Creek Bridge with the beauty of life and nature being some fleeting dream. It is imperative that we not put off things that are important, that we not postpone to a future date something joyful and enriching, that we not wait too long to do the things we've longed to do. It is imperative that we live for today and not for tomorrow or yesterday. "This is the day the Lord the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it!"
There's an old story of a sailing ship that was crippled off the coast of South America. Sighting a friendly vessel, it sent up the signal: "Water, water, we die of thirst." The answer came back: "Cast your bucket where you are!" The captain of the distressed vehicle thought there must be a mistake. So he repeated the signal and received the same answer. He didn't know that they were just then crossing the Amazon ocean current and that instead of being in salt water, they were actually sailing in fresh water. Finally, he did what he was told, cast down his bucket, and it came up with fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River.
Wherever we are right now, in whatever season we are living, God has surrounded us with opportunities, challenges, resources, beauty, and wonder that we have never seen before and may never see again. So the way of wisdom is not to live in the past or live in the future, but to cast down our buckets where we are.
My friends, live one day at a time. Remember: "This is the day the day that the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it."
The expression "one day at a time" is a favorite of twelve-step programs. Its wisdom goes without question.
__________
If I were to ask you whether or not you can eat an elephant, most of you would say: "No!" "It can't be done!" "It's impossible!" "It's ridiculous even to consider it!" Yet the reality is that all of you can eat an elephant. Certainly not all at once, but if you ate small pieces over a long period of time, you could do it. You may not like it, but you could do it.
I'm beginning on a rather crazy note, proposing something preposterous, because the philosophy behind eating an elephant lies behind a clich‚ that has been a great help to a great number of people. It's the clich‚ "one day at a time." To those who are in the throes of a difficult problem or illness, to those who are facing something that seems overwhelming and impossible, one day at a time is the only way to go. One day at a time is the way it can be managed, handled, and overcome.
What I'd like to talk with you about today is living one day at a time. But not so much in deference to the down times of life, but more in terms of how that kind of living keeps us in touch with the wonder and beauty that is ever before us. Great experiences, golden opportunities, unbelievable and exhilarating moments in life often pass us by because we fail to live one day at a time.
An actor had had his day, but he wouldn't believe it. He used to go down to the theater in the morning when it was empty and go through all his popular roles again -- the tragic, the comic -- responding in play action to what he considered to be the breathless attention of the audience. But, of course, there was no audience, there was no curtain to bring down, and there was no applause when the drama was over. The despair which he felt in his own soul was always echoed by the emptiness around him.
We all know people like that. Sometimes we're all a little like that ourselves. We live in yesterday instead of today. We keep looking to yesterday as though it were the only way that life could be lived, assigning to the past the sacredness and the purity that it never really had.
Samuel Johnson once said to an artist who wanted to paint his portrait that he wished to have his face painted "warts and all." Somehow, by a deft process, we remove the warts from the faces of the past, and we glorify it. We idealize circumstances and people and the possibilities that then existed, with little realization that if, by some miracle, we could live in the past, we wouldn't find it all that great, we wouldn't find it all that glorious. There's beauty, there's richness, there's wonder in the "one day of life" that is here right now. But if we choose to live in yesterday, it will all be missed and lost, and our lives will have been denied many wonderful experiences and blessings.
There are also those who are always living in tomorrow, who are letting the "one day at a time" slip through their fingers as they yearn for things yet to come. For example, a little girl is trying to be a young lady, a little boy can't wait to get out of school, a college student thinks of nothing except graduation. You might say to them, "Enjoy your youth! School days are the happiest days of your life!" But it all falls on deaf ears. A business person hangs on for the breakthrough product that will put him on easy street. A middle-aged factory worker lives for Saturday night to see if the lottery number she's chosen will match the ones on the television screen. A couple waits for the time when the mortgage will be paid. An elderly person counts off the days until retirement. In all these cases, the "one day at a time" is blurred because it is a future that they're waiting for. Life is put on hold until there comes that time when what they're waiting for has arrived.
I know a minister who is never in the church that he is in. He's always in the next one, the more prestigious one, the perfect one. So his present congregation receives only a fragment of his love and attention. His head and his heart are somewhere else. Already he's deciding which church will be his new church and what he will do when he gets there.
One can visit a store which has the latest in electronic equipment, the state of the art in stereos, CDs, and cassettes. There will be many who will go there intent on buying something only to end up waiting for the price to be a little cheaper, the quality and texture of the product to be a little better. When the period of waiting is over, they may go there again only to hear a rumor of a whole new method of reproducing sound that will be coming out soon. They wait again. Then they come back and decide to hold out still longer for the real state-of-the-art stereo. All this time is going by when these persons are bereft of listening to any recorded music. The enjoyment of hearing a favorite musician gives way to traveling back and forth to the store.
One of the problems of living in tomorrow is that your life is always being held back. You're not enjoying today because you're waiting for that future time when everything will be right, when the perfect recording machinery can be bought, when the perfect job or church can be had, when all the loose ends of life can be neatly tied. And all the while, there's loveliness around you and under your feet, there's beautiful music being played and you're missing it all.
Living one day at a time carries with it a prescription: stop living in yesterday, stop living in tomorrow, and start living in today.
That, I believe, is the underlying theme of scripture texts traditionally presented in the lectionary during the final Sundays of the Church year. They deal with the end times, and the reality that we will never know the day or the hour when those end times will occur. The somewhat frightening message of Daniel in our first reading and of Jesus in our Gospel are meant to remind us that the tomorrow we're banking on isn't guaranteed, that things can happen which can rob us of our plans, our hopes, our dreams, and even our yesterdays.
One of the vintage Twilight Zone episodes back in the Rod Serling days centered on a short story that has become a classic in many literary circles. I'm referring to "The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." It's the story of a man about to be hanged. Soldiers are leading him to a bridge that spanned a waterway called Owl Creek. In the center of the bridge, the man's hands and feet are tied and a rope, dropped from the top of the bridge, is put around his neck. When everything is ready, the commanding officer barks an order and the condemned man is pushed off the bridge, the rope securely tied to his neck and its end securely tied to the beam. Something strange happens. The rope breaks and the man goes plummeting to the creek far below. As he hits the water, he realizes that he's alive. He works hard to free himself from the rope around his hands, feet, and neck. Swimming quickly to the shore, he's ecstatic. He didn't die! He has a second chance at life! Suddenly, the world around him, all of the nature that circles the shore, takes on a beauty overlooked in the times prior to his walking on the bridge. The blueness of the sky, the arching branches of the trees, the shape of the leaves, the wild flowers, fill him with ecstasy. They've never looked so wonderful. Then a bullet zings through the air and off he runs into the woods. He runs and runs, and soon he sees a house with a white fence around it. As the gate opens, he can't believe his eyes. He's back home again. He then sees his wife running from the front door to meet him. He can't wait to embrace her. Just as he's inches short of this wonderful exchange of love, the camera jarringly takes us back to Owl Creek Bridge. The man who was about to embrace his wife is seen dangling from the bridge, a rope tied around his neck.
The apparent new lease on life had never occurred. It was just something he imagined as he was pushed off the bridge. With death staring him in the eye, the beauty of nature and the love of his wife took on a richer, deeper dimension, spawning a most wonderful dream. But, unfortunately for him, it was just a dream. It was too late to appreciate and relish what was once real.
That is the payoff for living one day at a time. One can come to know and appreciate life before it's too late, before something happens that can make the beautiful things of life only a fleeting dream. Death has robbed too many people of the tomorrow that they longed for, the time they were banking on to enjoy life. Because we never know the day nor the hour of our death or of some illness, it is imperative that we live in the present, that we live for today, that we take life one day at a time.
Dr. Frank Boreham was a distinguished Australian preacher and author. One weekend he was a guest preacher in a distant church, and he stayed overnight in the home of one of the members. Coming downstairs in the morning, he noticed that in the clear glass of the window on the landing were the scriptural words: "This is the day the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it!" At breakfast, he mentioned the unusual window to his hostess, and he found her eager to explain it. She said there was a period in her life when remembrances of the past were paralyzing and the thought of the future terrifying. One day, her eyes fell upon the words of the psalmist: "This is the day the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it!" She came to realize that she had to live one day at a time. When she did so, the past wasn't so paralyzing, the future wasn't so terrifying. She began to notice the beauty around her, the joy that was available to her. So she had the word of the psalmist carved into the window so that she would remind herself every morning of the need to discover the wonder and the excitement of the day that was unfolding before her.
The scripture reading of today and those of next week remind us that life is short and that we never know the day nor the hour when we might find ourselves atop some Owl Creek Bridge with the beauty of life and nature being some fleeting dream. It is imperative that we not put off things that are important, that we not postpone to a future date something joyful and enriching, that we not wait too long to do the things we've longed to do. It is imperative that we live for today and not for tomorrow or yesterday. "This is the day the Lord the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it!"
There's an old story of a sailing ship that was crippled off the coast of South America. Sighting a friendly vessel, it sent up the signal: "Water, water, we die of thirst." The answer came back: "Cast your bucket where you are!" The captain of the distressed vehicle thought there must be a mistake. So he repeated the signal and received the same answer. He didn't know that they were just then crossing the Amazon ocean current and that instead of being in salt water, they were actually sailing in fresh water. Finally, he did what he was told, cast down his bucket, and it came up with fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River.
Wherever we are right now, in whatever season we are living, God has surrounded us with opportunities, challenges, resources, beauty, and wonder that we have never seen before and may never see again. So the way of wisdom is not to live in the past or live in the future, but to cast down our buckets where we are.
My friends, live one day at a time. Remember: "This is the day the day that the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it."
