THIS Day...Today
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Give us this day
For this NON-procrastinator, it is very difficult to live in the moment, in the today! My mind is always racing ahead...to the next responsibility, the next event, the next idea... As a result, " time crunches" and "performance anxiety" are often the name of my game! So I love these words from our Lord, captured with the help of two brothers.
Give us THIS day our daily bread...
Here is today's reflection to feed my soul...and yours?
Most of us live trapped in anxiety around either the past or the future
There is something about the human condition that seems incapable of living in the now. We seem unable to enjoy the moment; to be grateful for our current provision; to be joyful in our present reality. We tend to either memorialize the past or anxiously await the future.
...for some of us, we seem to incessantly gravitate back to the “glory years.” This is quite common in the life of church. As the congregation grows and evolves, some of us are tempted to say, “I wish we could go back to (fill in the blank) era. Things were so peaceful then. Everybody knew each other. There was so much harmony and joy.” Of course, the actual reality was almost never as good as the fantasy we have turned the glory years into. But that’s just the point – by fondly remembering a story we’ve created for ourselves, we find another way to escape from the reality we currently live in.
For others of us, we spend all of our precious emotional resources on trying to guess what lies ahead. We worry about our future finances, our future vocation, our future spouse, or the future of our kids. We plan, strategize, and obsess over every potential detail. We hear the words of Jesus — “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” — but it doesn’t seem to break the anxiety cycle. When it comes down to our emotional and spiritual state, we realistically live much more in the future than in the present moment. Daniel Hill
praying hands
So again we pray...
I do not ask
for some future bread.
I do not ask
for some lofty thing.
I ask for nothing more
I ask for nothing less
than primal provision.
For this, and this—only this.
I do not ask for then.
I do not ask for there.
I do not ask for that.
only this meal—this moment.
for this day, only
for this, and this—only this.
