Sometimes I forget. I think we all do. It’s part of our nature. We forget the important things and center our minds on ourselves. In every second. In every minute. In every day, our center of focus is on ourselves. Selfish, yeah, but true. We live as if we were created for ourselves, as if God is our personal servant, meeting our needs and wishes as we desire.

But I woke up with the song “One More Day” (by Aaron Cole) in my head. The essential line of the song is “Giving thanks for one more day”.

One MORE day.

Think about that.

Not only is it amazing that we got a single day in the first place. But to think that God sat in heaven while I slept and decided “yeah, I think I’ll give Kyndra another one”. And every night He does that. Every morning is one MORE day.

If we think about life as a sequence of moments, one moment being placed in front of the other, with no certainty about there even be another, it’s pretty amazing. It’s like stepping stones appearing in front of our feet one at a time, leading us across a deep trench. He gives us one more in each moment. One more day. One more hour. One more breath.

It’s crazy to think that with all the terrible things that my little sinful self gets into each day, God still decides to give me one more chance. From the perspective of a little human desperately clinging to a very fragile existence, that’s a pretty big deal. I am completely dependent on God giving me this “one more“.

But this one more could at any point be the last. And if he decides that this one more is in fact my last, there is nothing I can do about it. He is the Creator. He creates and decides the fate of his creation. So every moment I bank on the hope that there is another one more behind this one and another one behind that. But the fact remains: each day is simply one more day tacked on the end of yesterday. There is no guarantee that there will be another.

For this reason, I should be thankful that I even received this one more. I should be thankful that God turned to himself and decided to give me just a little more. Rather than ungratefully seeking another one, I should learn to praise Him for this one. I should learn the work well within this one.

Today is a new day and a good chance to be what God has destined me to be, to do good works in His name, to be obedient to Him, to develop godly habits. Today is a good day to focus on today. So with the new year, I decided to focus on just this one more, just today, and put my best into it. Yesterday, this one more day wasn’t promised and at the end of today, there’s no guarantee that God will grant me another. So thank you, Father, for one more day and one more chance to be better.

KMJ 2/2/19

“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.”
Lamentations 3:22-23 NIV