Living one day according to God’s plan is a good idea to start with. But learning to live in such a way every day is something else.
We usually ask questions because we have a genuine need to know. And God has left us a way to communicate with Him. That is why the first ingredients of any daily project must be prayer and Bible study. You probably know this already, don’t you? Prayer is the means by which we communicate with God, “revealing” to Him our perplexities, desires and needs; and the Bible is God’s revelation for all of life.
We do not live life in wholes, but piece by piece, one piece a day. Jesus said: “Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34). So it is wise to concentrate on today and not to worry about the future. But if you don’t have a plan for your life, for the future, you probably won’t know what to do with one day and the next.
We have a life measured in decades, and I assure you it is very short and passes quickly. Therefore, the project of living an exemplary day, a day as God would have you live it, could be called the Ephemeris Project or the Butterfly Project.
If you think you are going to live to be a hundred years old, or if you are a young person and you look into the future and see your old age as a long way off, then what you will do on any given day will be from the perspective of living in the moment: doing something that satisfies you. But if you knew you only had one day left, you might have better ideas.
What would that last day be? It would be the day of repentance, if you hadn’t repented by then. It would be the day of wills, if you had anything to leave behind, or the day of last counsels, if there’s anyone to listen. The day of parting, the day of the last hymn and the last prayer, the day of catching the last train. But sadly, most people are not ready for that last day because, whenever it comes, it comes too soon. No, we should not talk about the project of a special day, but about an ordinary day.
People and days: contrasts with a message
But even ordinary days are different from person to person. An ordinary, seemingly boring day in the life of Abraham is different from an ordinary day in the life of Esau. Esau gets up early, takes his bow and knife and goes out to hunt antelope and gazelles. He returns late, hungry and tired, sometimes with game. The world is his prey. The years go by, he falls in love with one girl, then another, and marries them all, being a man of his word… And so he spends his life: by day with the gazelles, by night with his wives.
But what about a day in the life of Esau’s grandfather? It is the same torrid day. Sheikh Abraham has a multitude of tents and servants who don’t ask to be freed and don’t run away, who tend his flocks and herds. He simply gathers them from time to time at the shrine to pray, gives them a day off every seven days, socialises with them every week, but does not personally order them to work. He has an older servant who is their boss, and everyone else obeys him. Sarah works in the tent, although she could leave everything to the servants if she wanted to.
The sheikh sits at the entrance to the tent, occasionally shading his eyes with his hand to see who else is passing by. He could sleep carelessly, as all masters do at midday. But Abraham has a project. Not a one-day project, but a daily habit. God had not placed him at the crossroads for nothing, he believed.
Abraham felt that he had no call or vocation to go into the cities and warn his pagan neighbours to abandon their idols. But perhaps a weary traveller would not refuse him an invitation to a good meal and a rest in the shade of the terebinth trees. And perhaps the stranger would remember the gesture, and later remember the God of the man of God, the God of the great trees of Mamre. God had not said to him: “Take heed to preach me,” but he thought that his God really deserved to be remembered and honoured by everyone.
The Bible tells us that it was on such a day that Abraham was unwittingly visited by the Lord and two angels disguised as three travellers (Hebrews 13:2; Genesis 18:1-2). Three strangers, with no camels or asses, only rods, had stopped on the road near his tents and seemed to be consulting with each other. The sheikh understood the message: the people were looking for a place to rest and wondering what to do. Should they venture to the nearby terebinth trees or look elsewhere?
In situations like this, today we would say: “Well, they’ll find a solution”. And we really do live in different conditions, where you have to be careful who you shelter under your roof. But Abraham had nothing to worry about. He had hundreds of servants who had proved themselves to be good warriors. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, he ran up to the men and, treating them as honoured guests, bowed to the ground, as was the custom of the time, and addressed the man who appeared to be their leader: “If I have found favour in your eyes, my lord…”. He invited them to take a break, wash their feet, eat and rest before continuing their journey.
When you know that the Lord of Heaven is passing by, you don’t treat him like a wanderer: “Come, Lord, I’ll give you some polenta and sour cream so that you can regain your strength and then go about your business!” Had he known it was God, Abraham would have trembled. Or he would have invited all his servants and neighbours to enjoy the visit from heaven. Or perhaps he would have reminded God that he didn’t yet have a child.
The strangers accepted his invitation, but they seemed rather quiet. Abraham didn’t send his servants to look after the strangers. He asked Sarah to quickly bake some bread, fetched a calf and gave it to a servant to cook, then brought some curds, milk and the prepared calf to the table himself. The story then takes a different turn.
When the guest reveals to Abraham that he knows his secrets, that his wife’s name is Sarah and that God has promised him a son, the sheikh realises who his guests are. Eventually, the Lord sends the other two to Sodom as His messengers to test the hospitality of the Sodomites, while He remains to speak with His beloved earthly friend and to reveal that He has decided to destroy the very cities he had fought to liberate. In other words, Abraham would learn that goodness is good in itself, but you can’t always expect good deeds to have a saving influence, let alone be repaid by people. Sin makes people ungrateful and hostile.
Abraham then spent the rest of the day bargaining with his God for the lives of the people he had fought for. This is one day in the life of the patriarch. Not a planned day, but one that captured him in his usual way. It also captured Sarah as she was. She could have told her husband: “Have you lost your mind, man? What’s the rush for some strangers? You may be a householder and have everything, but did you really have to slaughter a calf for three drifters who set out without mules?”
A project for life, lived day by day
The project of a day is nothing more than the daily, systematic, and progressive application of the project of life, if we have one.
What I have to do today depends on who I am and on various conditions. Most of us do not find the time to ask such philosophical questions.
We already have a routine that follows the schedule we have made or that has been made for us. We have to go to school or work, take the children to kindergarten or look after them every day, cook or do all sorts of other chores, make phone calls, get involved in other people’s projects, and so on. We don’t have much time to think about an ideal life project, nevermind a Butterfly Project.
However, if we ask ourselves what God wants us to do today, it means going beyond routine commitments. Some commitments can only be avoided by a radical change in life, and it is not wise to be radical every day. But in order to make a plan for our lives, or to find the right one for us, starting today, we cannot avoid setting aside a quiet time, preferably early in the morning, to talk with God about the plan and its application today.
In this way, even routine obligations take on a different meaning in the divine plan: they become a sacred mission in the way they are seen and carried out, not just for selfish purposes. Relationships also become more selective and blessed. One never knows when, in the course of such a day of grace, we will meet angels who will bring us good news.
My answer has not been a real answer for you, but has only provided some evidence for the answer you will have to give yourself after you have made a plan for your life. But it is significant to note that only those who have learned to appreciate a day will know how to appreciate eternity.
Florin Lăiu emphasises the importance of living each day according to divine principles and believes that a “perfect” day is measured by the application of spiritual values in each moment.
