Pastor’s Pen: Face up to the important things that need addressed today

During this past week I found myself clearing my rather untidy office of a few empty cups, many scrap pieces of paper, and a few books.

In my tidying I came across a bathroom mirror that my dear wife has been asking me to hang. As I pushed it away into a corner, I said to myself: ‘Someday I will get round to fixing that’. In our busy lives the word ‘someday’ gets used a lot; ‘Someday I’m going to tidy the garage, someday I’m going to spend quality time with my kids, someday, someday, someday’.

The truth is that someday is not a day in the week. It’s easy to put things off, to procrastinate.

It’s easy to slip into a someday mode. And sometimes it’s easier just to use the excuse of ‘someday’ without any intention of ever getting round to it.

James, the brother of Jesus, wrote a letter to a group of dispersed Christian communities, in which he focuses on their ‘someday’ moments. Reflecting on their actions he says this: “you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ You do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes”.

James is asking them to stop thinking about their ‘somedays’, and putting off the things that are really important. After all, life is so short that it’s like mist - it appears and then it’s gone.

A bit like my bathroom mirror that’s waiting to be hung, there are things in life that we keep leaving to another day to fix. For some it could be a relationship that needs restored, for others it might be the need to say sorry to someone. Today is your someday. Not tomorrow.

Benjamin Franklin once said: “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today”. For all of us, we need to face up to the important things that need addressed today, because as James says, our lives are like mist.