Carpe Diem!

If you have enough time read Lamentations 1 (it’s hiding between Jeremiah and Ezekiel) and/or Hebrews 12.

She did not consider her future. Lamentations 1:9

Carpe Diem! Seize the day! So the saying goes.

And I suppose I agree – only – I have a question – which day are we supposed to seize?

Am I to live life as though today is all there is? This can sound great – until of course I wake up tomorrow and find out it wasn’t. This is what the people of Jerusalem did – always pretending that their future would not be affected by the way they lived in their present. And of course Lamentations isn’t called Lamentations because that future turned out the way they had hoped for.

At the same time, others of us can find ourselves living as though yesterday is all there is – as we find ourselves stuck in the pain others have caused us or in the guilt we’ve brought on ourselves. Instead of seizing the day we tend to be seized by the day instead.

Then there is Carpe Diem Cras – or seize the day tomorrow – which isn’t really about seizing the day at all but only putting off the seizing for another time.

But what if the day to seize now is our final day? What if I could reach out my hand far enough into the future and pick out that last day, whenever it might be, and bring it into the present – not to hasten its coming – but rather to live now in the light of what that day reveals? To seize that day today?

Granted the words are true that if the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’ 1 Corinthians 15:32

But if the dead are raised.

And not only raised but raised in and with and through the glory of the Son … would this not allow us to throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us[?] Let[ting] us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God[?] Hebrews 12:1-2

Wherever I am, whomever I am with, whatever surrounds me – the good, the bad, and the ugly – to live today as though the promised day of victory in Jesus is already mine (it is, by the way) – and that this day of victory, in the end, is all that matters – how might considering my future affect my present? How might seizing that day affect my now on this day – and all that I do and say alone and with others and with HIM???

Seize it – for it is already yours!

Prayer: O Lord Jesus, help me to seize the day – that day – today, even as you have come to seize me. In your name. Amen.