First, our kids couldn't feed themselves. Then they slowly began to learn to do it themselves. Since then, they've been really, really good at it! But in those very early days of teaching them to feed themselves, we didn't just hand them this big slab of meat to eat and say, "Go for it, kid." Every parent knows the drill - you cut the big piece into bite-size chunks so it's manageable. I got so used to doing it, it was embarrassing when I was out to lunch with a businessman and I started cutting his meat up for him!
I love our word for today from the Word of God in Zephaniah 3:5. In just seven reassuring words, God points us to the way He wants us to handle this "big piece of meat" called our life. It simply says, "Every new day He does not fail." God says instead of trying to do weeks and months and years, would you do life in these 24-hour increments He's obviously wired us for? Do days.
When we try to drag yesterday, with its baggage and its failures into today, we start to sink. When we try to drag tomorrow into today, with its worries and its fears, we run ahead of His resources, which are issued each new day for that day. I've got Monday's resources for Monday's needs. When I start worrying about Tuesday, or a week from Tuesday, I'm on my own and I'm going down.
There has never been and there never will be a day that our Lord has failed us. On different days our spouse may have failed us, our family may have failed us, our boss, our friends, our coworkers, the folks at church; even our income or our health. But "every new day, He does not fail." That's called days without fear.
And here is your Lord's guarantee for each new day. He's promised new mercies for every battle. Surrounded by the collapse of everything around him, Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations 3, "I remember my affliction and my wandering." In other words, on many new days, he had failed - just like you and me. "I remember the bitterness and the gall ... my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness."
God knows how to balance the grief with His goodness. He knows just when you just have to have an encouragement, and He sends it. He knows just when you need a hopeful sign, or some comfort, when you need some rest, an extra shot of strength, or a miracle. And He sends it right on time.
God knows when you've had all you can take and He raises His almighty hand and says, "Enough! No more!" He's promised to never let you have "more than you can bear." (1 Cor. 10:13) "Because of the Lord's great love," you are "not consumed." You serve the God of daily bread; of "strength equal to your days." (Deut. 33:25) The God of whom you can say every new day, "This is the day my Lord has made." (Psalm 118:24) Not the day my condition has made, or my boss has made, or my frustrations have made, or my spouse has made. My Lord made this day and has promised me everything I'll need to live it.
Don't even try to handle that big piece of life you've got in front of you right now. Your Heavenly Father cuts it into bite-size chunks so it's manageable - bite-size chunks called "every new day"!
Copyright (c) 2003, Ron Hutchcraft.
www.hutchcraft.com
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