LIVING LIKE TOMORROW IS ALREADY YESTERDAY

As editor of a small magazine, producer of a small radio broadcast, and a speaker who sometimes has bookings as far as two years in advance (with lots of holes in between, mind you), I'm always thinking ahead.

My organized side likes that. I don't wait until Friday night to figure out what I'm speaking about on Saturday night (except for those times when the Lord thinks it's funny to make me totally abandon what I'd planned to say in favor of His idea). In April, I'm already making a few preparations for what I'm doing in September.

I keep notebooks and file folders into which I stick little snippets of thought for the dozen upcoming projects. Then when it's time to fully address each project, my research is done, my ideas flow, and I can be ready in time without last minute cramming.

I operate best that way.

Or do I?

The flip side--there's a flip side to everything, isn't there?--is when I start to act as if tomorrow is already yesterday.

"I'm so far behind on my message for the mother/daughter banquet!" The banquet is more than a month away and I'm in mourning that I only have an outline so far.

"I'll never get this all done!" I cry, pacing the throw-rug-sized floor space in my office and glancing furtively from to-do list to to-do list. I slip into a moment of panic that the workshops for next week are only partially fleshed out. Next week.

I act as if I can project ahead and somehow believe that the assignments the Lord gave me might have been good ideas on His part, but He failed to take into consideration the time constraints.

Yeah. Like that's ever happened.

As if He would have a hard time calculating and adjusting, He who invented dawn and dusk and tides and seasons.

Do I sometimes look at the choices my kids or my friends make today and already project ahead to the misery those choices will cause? If I act as if we're already living in miserable, I'm cheating them out of the opportunity to change course, and cheating the Lord out of the opportunity to reveal His redemptive power at work in the ones I love.

I discern trouble ahead. But there's no sense setting up residence in the land of misery before we get there.

God said it best in His Word. I shouldn't worry about tomorrow. It has enough troubles of its own.

So I'm going to relax a little. Just as soon as I figure out what I'm serving for Thanksgiving.