Some Encouragement

The other night at the Dallas airport I had some time to kill. My flight was delayed an extra hour and whenever I travel, I always print out numerous articles from a lot of different sources... most of which I never get a chance to read. But the other night, I was looking through my bag since my 3 books just weren't doing the trick, and I came across some articles I had printed out months ago for one of my flights home to CO. Finance articles (yup, this girl loves to read about work stuff), friend's blogs, the latest posts from Bill Gates, and finally exactly what I needed... a chapter called "Every Day Deserves A Chance" by Max Lucado.

Now I wasn't having a bad day or needing a change in perspective. But I DO have those bad days and I often DO need changes in perspective. So I picked it up and read it, seeking encouragement and advice. And I got everything I was hoping for and more. Words that made me take out my camera phone and snap a picture of the page, so when I am having one of those days, I can have this little refresher right there to refer to. I hope it's as encouraging to you as it was to me:

".... Suppose neck deep in a 'terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day,' you resolve to give it a chance. You choose not to drink or work or worry it away but give it a fair shake. You trust more. Stress less. Amplify gratitude. Mute grumbling. And what do you know? Before long the day is done and surprisingly decent. 

So decent, in fact, that you resolve to give the next day the same fighting chance. It arrives with its hang-ups and bang-ups, bird drops and shirt stains, but by and large, by golly, giving the day a chance works! You do the same the next day and the next. days become a week. Weeks become months. Months become years of good days.

In such a fashion good lives are built. One good day at a time.

An hour is too short, a year too long. Days are the bite-size portions of life, the God-designed segments of life management.

Eighty-four thousand heartbeats.

One thousand four hundreds and forty minutes.

A complete rotation of the earth.

A circle of the sundial.

Two dozen flips of the hourglass.

Both a sunrise and a sunset.

A brand-spanking-new, unsoiled, untouched, uncharged, and unused day!

A gift of twenty-four unlived, unexplored hours.

And if you can stack one good day on another and another, you will link together a good life.

But here's what you need to keep in mind.

You no longer have yesterday. It slipped away as you slept. It is gone. You'll more easily retrieve a puff of smoke. You can't change, alter, or improve it. Sorry, no mulligans allowed. Hourglass sand won't flow upward. The second hand of the clock refuses to tick backward. The monthly calendar reads left to right, not right to left. You no longer have yesterday.

You do not yet have tomorrow. Unless you accelerate the orbit of the earth or convince the sun to rise twice before it sets once, you can't live tomorrow today. You can't spend tomorrow's money, celebrate tomorrow's achievements, or resolve tomorrow's riddles. You have only today. This is the day the Lord has made.

Live in it. (Emphasis mine)You must be present to win. Don't heavy today with yesterday's regrets or acidize it with tomorrow's troubles...."

There's so much more that is so good. Please read the rest. I keep hearing lately about "living in the present" and while I've dismissed it often, I've been more convicted lately to really do so. To give today. To listen today. To do today. To serve today. Let this be an encouragement to you as well... THIS is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it :)