DAY 6: Living One Day At A Time (Part 2)

Before we look at how to live in day-tight compartments, let me tell you the end goal. I think God wants us to be fully-present. William James said that most of us are 'half-awake.' C.S Lewis said that most of us are 'half-hearted'. In other words, most of us are 'half-alive'. Let me add one more to the mix. I think most of us are 'half-present'.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone and you get the feeling that they're listening but they aren't really listening? Or you're with them but it doesn't really feel like they are there? I think we know intuitively that you can be someplace physically, but be a million miles away mentally or emotionally. You aren't fully present.

I think most of us have been through a worship experience where we were 100% present - totally engaged mentally and emotionally and spiritually. But we've also sung words while thinking about something that happened last week or something that is going to happen next week. One study has shown that after you sing a song thirty times, you no longer think about the words. And we end up 'going through the motions.'

Luke 10 talks about Martha, who was getting ready for a dinner party with Jesus and it says, she was 'distracted' by all the preparations. And Jesus says to Martha., "You are worried and upset about many things."

I think most of us are hald-present because we're 'distracted' or 'worried' or 'upset' about something that has happened or might happen, instead of living one day at a time. As Jesus observed in Matthew 6:34, "Each day has enough trouble of its own." We need to take it one day at a time!

This is particularly important in a transition because we tend to be thinking about a hundred things, pulled in different directions, worried over a myraid of things that we are no longer living in the present. We are zoned out. Consequently, we stop hearing God who is always 'present'. And our family feels the distance. Worst still, if we don't find friends to unload and process and pray with us about what we are going through, we become even more isolated. We drift away.

That is why it is so important in a transition that we are rightly connected with God and with the right godly people. It helps us to be fully present to manage the change in those transitions.

(adapted from Senior Pastor Guna Raman devotional, "Managing Transition in a Downturn"