‘Today’

I have a nephew in-law, a great young man who is handicapped by brain damage, and who in conversation with me constantly asks me about ‘tomorrow.’  I constantly reply to him that we are in ‘today,’ so I steer conversation to talk about ‘today.’  Yet I, too, constantly think about ‘tomorrow,’ the future, the challenge that increasingly looms large.  And then I remind myself that tomorrow will be greatly affected by what goes on today—so I say to myself and to whomever might listen, ‘make the most of it.’  I know that the ultimate outcome and victory of a life well-lived a day at a time will be the greatest reward.

Besides that, "Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength." (Corry Ten Boom)

Then my mind reverts to songs (as it so often does) that express or validate my conclusions. 

 

One of those songs titled Today, which you may remember, was featured on a 33 rpm New Christy Minstrels album I had in my young adulthood. 

   

The first three verses of this song are but sweet persiflage but the fourth verse contributes some substance:  

I can't be contented with yesterday's glory
I can't live on promises winter to spring
Today is my moment, now is my story
I'll laugh and I'll cry and I'll sing

[In double-checking the spelling of ‘persifage’ in the above sentence the dictionary supplied this insightful and contributory example:

     “The time straying toward infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by steady faith.”]

In the Christian-music genre another song of the same title, Today, sung by ’33 Miles’ goes this way:

Worry keeps waking me up
Calling me at 3 am
Fear wants to shut me down
Telling me what might happen
Doubt plays with my mind
Trying to twist the truth
All these distractions, beg a reaction,
So here's what I'm gonna do

Right here, right now
I'm living for You and nothing else
For yesterday is history
and tomorrow's gonna write itself
All I got is the moment I'm in
And I don't ever want to waste
This gift, this chance, right here, right now, today

And finally, another song from over a decade ago, One Moment in Time, sung by Whitney Houston still brings a tear to my eye when I think of certain loved ones who are letting the 'todays' of their life slip by:

  

Each day I live, I want to be
A day to give the best of me
I'm only one, but not alone
My finest day is yet unknown

I broke my heart for every gain
To taste the sweet, I faced the pain
I rise and fall, yet through it all
This much remains

I want one moment in time
When I'm more than I thought I could be
When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away
And the answers are all up to me

Give me one moment in time
When I'm racing with destiny
Then in that one moment of time
I will feel, I will feel eternity

I've lived to be the very best
I want it all, no time for less
I've laid the plans, now lay the chance
Here in my hands

You're a winner for a lifetime
If you seize that one moment in time, make it shine

Give me one moment in time
When I'm racing with destiny
Then in that one moment of time
I will be, I will be, I will be free, I will be, I will be free

Writer(s): John Bettis, Albert Hammond
Copyright: Albert Hammond Music, John Bettis Music

Giving (and taking) Offense

In a recent Church meeting we were encouraged to be ‘quick to observe.’  That is good advice.

Sometimes, though, people are ‘quick or easy to offend.’ That would not be good advice--neither as the giver of ‘offense’ nor especially as the one who is quick or easy to offend.  “A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city; and their contentions are like the bars of a castle” (Proverbs 18:19).  The problem is twofold: “The scorner is consumed. . . that make[s] a man an offender for a word, and lay[s] a snare for him. . . and turn[s] aside the just for a thing of nought” (Isaiah 29: 20-21).  Hence, both are hurt.  Jesus said: “Woe unto the world because of offenses! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” Or, I might add, takes it.  (Matthew 18:7).  To paraphrase the apostle Paul, “Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God; [rather] I seek [not] mine own profit, but the profit [or benefit] of many, that they may be saved” (1 Corinthians 10: 32-33). 

 

Put into today’s terms, we should weigh our words carefully because many people are ‘thin-skinned’ and easily offended.  By offending them, they discount you ( they “turn aside the just for a thing of nought”) and they become more “consumed” or bitter and are not “profited” or receive the good you wanted to do them.  This occurs often because they reject your influence out of pride or defensiveness.   Alas.

The temptation, then, is to be so ‘politically correct’ that you offend no one—because you have essentially said nothing to them.  The problem, then, is that you may have given tacit approval to an action or behavior that you feel strongly very much against.  In not offending men, you have offended God, and have not been true to yourself. 

Know that though we are sometimes called upon to be a ‘voice of testimony or of warning,’ we will pay a price.  In the process we will always offend someone. Consider the price each of the men quoted today had to pay for their testimony. 

A person of integrity, however, will pay that price—the price of discipleship or of conviction.

Hell (part 2)

I notice that on Nov. 8, 2010 I published an essay on ‘hell’ and titled it ‘Hell (part 1)’.  For whatever unintended reason or oversight I failed to publish my intended ‘part two.’ This is ‘part two,’ four years later. To make any sense of today’s offering it would be well to go to my archives and review part one before continuing on. 

 

In even addressing such a subject I know that my statistical ‘ratings’ will fall because in our sophisticated scientific ‘enlightened’ time the subject is summarily dismissed as being an absurdity. Yet millions upon millions of people on earth—including me—believe in the logical concept and construct as an extension of our familiarity with mortal life, the promises of God and Jesus Christ, and the hope for a heaven—a positive and joyful afterlife condition for the righteous—and hell (at least as a temporary abode) as a consequence for those who are or succumb to evil. 

Could there not be some kernel of truth to the continued longevity of this concept? There is.  Most of us take cognizance of the war between good and bad, the virtuous and the evil, because we experience it personally—internally.  We also see it played-out socially in current events and geo-politically between nations, cultures, and world-views. Evil is too often in us, and always ‘out there.’ 

The problem in this diabolical attribution is the absurd portrayal of the ‘devil’ and his instruments of torture for those who find themselves in God’s disfavor and of the place where evil is concentrated and combated (hell).  As in most things, there is ‘more to the story,’ or in this case the divine revelation of the story, as I believe it has been given, and not just a fiction writer’s imagination.  But before I go on, even some fiction can be very helpful in understanding the evil or counter-point to all that we try to do which is good. 

C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, for example, is helpful to understanding Satan’s methods.  In classical literature Dante Alighieri’s allegory of hell, The Divine Comedy, both helps and hurts understanding.  If readers understand the symbols are not the reality (as portrayed in these works) then more light can shed on this dark subject.  The same can be said of John Bunyan’s classical work, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Scripture, though, tells us that Satan, a.k.a. the devil, an unembodied spirit through his premortal rebellion, is a fallen angel. (We humans are embodied spirits.) Satan has a great arsenal of counter-spiritual ‘weapons’ or blandishments (we call them temptations) that influence man against that which is good or right or life-affirming.  People who fall to evil behavior and who do not repent (change) while in mortality will suffer the consequences of it, at least for a time--the time it takes in which "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ," --in the afterlife.   

The suffering, though, is primarily deprivation or mental anguish at realizing ‘what could have been; and will consequently be eternally denied;’ it is not pitchforks, boiling oil or the like.  The suffering of those consigned to hell is that they have been ‘damned’ or stopped as a consequence of their own choices and dismissal of God's plan of salvation in their eternal progress.  Yet their mental sufferings eventually, and mercifully, come to an end. These individuals will then, at the final judgment, receive the degree of 'heaven,' but not the highest, that they have qualified for and in justice merit.

At least that is what my religion teaches, and it makes good sense to me.