Daily Devotion - April 17

One Day at a Time

“His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness“, Lamentations 3:22-33.

I think we can all agree that our lives have taken a pretty dramatic turn. Just a month ago the phrase “face masks” were not in the vocabulary of every day people. Now, not only are we talking about them, we are trying to match our face masks with our outfits! And on a more serious note, a month ago we would never imagine that our children couldn’t play with their friends, that we may not have a job to return to, or that spouses would be quarantining themselves from one another. In just one month, life came to a screeching halt. 

Each of us have discovered that we have coping mechanisms to deal with change and uncertainty. Maybe many of us stay in denial, or maybe we tend to overthink. Regardless of the way we cope, the anxiety and worry eventually shows up. As believers, we are told in 1 Peter to “cast all our anxieties on Him”, trusting that He is in control. But we also lie awake at night thinking it’s all just too much. We find ourselves struggling against our own worry and trusting a loving God, sometimes in the same moment! This season has most likely brought out a more intense version of our tendency to turn to our own devices when we get stressed. 

Psalm 65:7 says, “Who stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples”. Having control is one way we cope. Like protecting your home in the path of a hurricane, we want to protect ourselves at all costs and prepare so we aren’t surprised by anything. (Putting up walls so nothing can get in) We are always thinking ahead and that’s not a bad thing...until we can’t make sense of something. Until the thing we are trying to plan around isn’t something we can control. It can feel incredibly scary. And when fear sets in, anxiety comes and takes over. The psalmist reminds us that storms do come, but there is a loving God in the midst. We find stillness in Him, even as the storm rages. 

Scripture beckons us to remember God’s heart towards us in our daily need to seek him. The Bible is a story of rescue and redemption. A loving God seeking out his children and showing them (us) they can’t do life without him. I’m reminded of the children of Israel being led out of Egypt to the Promised land God would give them. God provided manna each day for them, without fail. Exodus 16:21 says “Morning by morning they gathered it”. God gave them specific instructions to only gather what they needed for that day, as the leftovers would spoil. He wanted them to depend on Him each day for what they needed to survive. 

God has been reminding me that we are to take one day at a time. One step at a time. This is where the gospel comes alive and where Emmanuel, “God with us” reminds us why He came: to walk this life with us daily. That He knows our tendency to not need him, to take care of everything on our own, to plan so well that we can depend on ourselves. He knows this and it is why we are reminded time and again that our trust in Him daily is how we are going to get through times of uncertainty. 

This is not to say we should not have plans and goals, but when we find ourselves looking too far down the road into uncharted territory, this is where we must choose to seek Jesus for the day we are in, to be present in His presence, and to trust him for today. 

Psalm 68:19, “Blessed be the Lord, who DAILY bears us up. God is our salvation”.