The Purpose of Each New Day - Growth

We live day to day without much thought, taking everything as they come, discerning very little and letting our emotions go with the flow of life's ups and downs. Yet, if we pause to think deeper and ask ourselves what is the purpose of living each new day, we may come to discover that life is quite meaningless as it seems. Why did God not just give us one day, one week or one year to live but many years for most of us? Why does He make the Sun rise each day along with our waking each morning? 

If the next day is going to be just the same as today, then what is the point of living this another day? If the next day needs no new things to be done, deeper levels of loving and serving others, more rooted love for God and stronger union with His love for us as today, then it means we have already accomplished the full purpose of our lives today and there is no need for tomorrow. I would like to believe that God has given us "tomorrow", yet another day, so that we can continue to walk towards the perfection of His love for us, made complete by our spreading of this love to others in the same selfless and sacrificial ways that Jesus Himself was an example of. 

If He never meant for us to grow daily, why would He then give us trials and failures, sufferings and pain? Even our physical bodies have to grow daily, our mental capacity develops as we study and read. If people say that "learning" is lifelong, what more the growth of our spiritual lives and our relationship with God, which are what truly matters in the life that awaits us at our death. If tomorrow is not going to be a day we decide and conscientiously make the extra effort to love more deeply, serve more selflessly and walk more closely in the footsteps of our Lord, Jesus Christ, then we may as well not live past tonight for tomorrow will be another wasted day, useless and brings about nothing better for ourselves and those around us. If we decide to be stagnant everyday by our indecisiveness for a more Christ-centred tomorrow, then we become like most people - lifeless, restless, tired, purposeless, hopeless, dull, boring and like a zombie walking the surface of the earth. We can never be filled with purpose, fulfilment, joy, peace, excitement, anticipation - all which makes us truly alive and living. 

We can only know how to live in more Christ-centred ways "tomorrow" if we know how we have and have not lived like Christ "today"; only then can we know what we have done good and what we need to improve on. If we never had to sit for examinations, how would we know which subjects we are good at, which we are not, which topics we are stronger in and which topics we need to revise more thoroughly and work harder at? Similarly, if we do not examine our lives daily, especially at the end of each day, do an honest evaluation of the way we have lived the day, how would we know what to put more effort in the next day? 

Let us pray that God will guide us each day to take more seriously every day that He gives to us, making full meaning of this life He has given to us so that we may come to know Him more intimately, love Him more deeply and follow Him more closely and in this manner, be filled with the peace, hope, love and joy that God promises us if we take Him to be the centre of our lives. 

12 February 2011, Saturday

11.04am