p. 15 | LIVING BY THE DAY.-

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 27, 1871

LIVING BY THE DAY.—

I compare, says John Newton, the troubles we have to undergo in the course of a year to a great bundle of fagots, far too heavy for us to lift. But God does not require us to carry the whole at once. He mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us first one bundle, which we are to carry to-day, and then another, which we are to carry to-morrow, and so on. This we might easily manage, if we would only take the burden appointed for us each day; but we choose to increase our troubles by carrying yesterday’s stick over again to-day, and adding to-morrow’s burden to our load before we are required to bear it.

William Jay puts the same truth in another way. We may consider the year before us a desk containing three hundred and sixty-five letters addressed to us—one for each day announcing its trials and prescribing its employments, with an order to open daily but the letter for the day. Now we may be strongly tempted to unseal beforehand some of the remainder. This, however, would only serve to embarrass us, while we should violate the rule our Owner and Master has laid down for us: “Take, therefore, no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.”