My perfect day, in my mind, would be to wake up in the morning to my alarm, jump out of bed bright and happy with a big smile on my face! I would be able to snap my fingers and be all dressed for the day, looking great and feeling confident! Snapping my fingers again, and I would be sitting in a warm heated car driving to work, hitting all the green lights and dealing with no traffic.
When I got to work, I would be able to sit right down, and do everything that I needed to do without encountering any errors. (Nothing would be out of place, of course because I would be so wonderfully organized!) I would get along with all my co-workers and not have any conflicts... I would be able to keep a smile on my face all day long and, when the bell rang to go home, I would skip happily out to my car and drive off to school.
Without having studied, I would ace all my tests and all of my teachers would love me. I would then leave school (very early, of course, because teachers love me) and would promptly run home, the needle to the gas tank in my car, not moving one bit! After spending an hour with my sisters and brothers (family bonding with no fights or arguments, of course) and helping my mother cook supper, I would then run off to my room to do whatever it was that I wished to do and at 8:00 p.m. I would promptly fall asleep in my warm cozy bed, in a squeeky clean room, with new fresh sheets and I would have the best dreams ever.
Okay. Wait a minute.
Yes, definitely in my dreams.
Let's come back down to earth now.
Looking at my "perfect day" what would you say was missing? Of course. God. You see, if we were to have perfect days and if everything went just as we wished it, then we would not have a need for a God. For a Savior.
We wouldn't need someone who we could take our cares and worries to because we would be care free. We would be the masters of ourselves and the owners of our own bodies.
But, reality is, we don't have a perfect life and there is all kinds of trash that goes on throughout our day.
Without Christ, I am nothing. Without His love, my life would be worthless. My body here on this earth would be like a flower that blooms on Monday, bight and beautiful, but then dies Tuesday. Life is a precious gift and in our life, we need to make the most of each day.
2 Corinthians 5:4,5 says,
"While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.
God did not make us to live on this earth forever. He made us to Glorify His name. Our bodies are not here to satisfy ourselves and our desires, but we are here to lift up Christ and worship Him.
Life will be hard and there will be difficult days and hard decisions to make. You might not always wake up happy and cheerful, a big smile on your face. You might have problems finding something to wear for the day and you might walk out to your car to go to work and realize that you need to scrape the ice off the windshield while standing in the bitter cold.
After you freeze your fingers off, you might get in your car and realize that your gas tank is blinking that dreaded red light, indicating that you might not make it to work unless you stop at a gas station and fill up. You will most likely have to deal with other cars on the roads and more than likely you will have to stop at red lights and stop signs.
When you arrive at work, you might find yourself with a project you completely forgot about and you have to scramble to gather all the information you need in order to present a fifty slide presentation to your boss and all his business partners in a meeting that will take place in the conference room in 30 minutes. After that, you might run into "Bob" at work and he might make a joke about your pants being wrinkled (wrinkled from when you were trying to frantically dress because you woke up late, of course) or your tie being crooked. That will probably put you in a terrible mood for the rest of the day. You'll finish work and drive to school (dealing with all the terrible traffic again, of course) and discover your teachers thought it would be funny to surprise everyone with a surprise test.
After leaving school (later than normal because you had to stay and explain to your teacher why you failed your test last week because you were deathly sick --which, by the way, added extra doctor bills to your budget-- and beg them to please let you take the test again) you would then drive home, exhausted from the day, walk inside the house and wish everyone leave you alone so you could just go to bed.
And, as you were just about to drift off to sleep, you would remember a five page, single-spaced paper that was due tomorrow that you haven't even begun to think about.
Now, I might have exaggerated a little ... but, sometimes our days really do feel like what I described and we just want to hide ourselves from the world. You might not have the same kind of schedule as me, and you might not even have the same events in your life. But, no matter what, sometimes we can feel like everything is crashing down on us in life and nothing is going right.
This is when we have to remember that we are not here on this world forever and our ultimate goal is not to have lived a perfect life, problem and care free, but it is to serve Christ and make His name glorified.
So as you go through your day, remember to devote your time to God and remember that your earthly body will not be here forever. This is just the warm up. Our real victory will be when we cross that finish line and hear Christ say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
