In recent weeks, I’ve been chatting about the seven days we all have to navigate in life. Epochs of time that God has designed for us to manage and experience. Previously, I’ve mentioned Someday, for dreaming, and Any Day (now), for waiting. The next day we’ll consider is … Every Day, for living.
Probably the simplest way to define Every Day would be to say that it’s the day ‘life’ happens. That’s why we call it ‘everyday life.’ Every Day is the day the sun comes up, and the traffic gets worse. Every Day, people go to work at jobs they don’t particularly enjoy, and come home to houses they haven’t paid for yet. Every Day is the day the six o’clock evening news comes on at precisely six o’clock. People go about their lives, picking up the laundry at the cleaners, or dropping the kids off at school. Babies are born and old people die and everybody get one day older, Every Day. Every Day, rituals and traditions are formed. Life Every Day can look a lot like life every other day, if we aren’t careful. And that would be a tragedy, because life every day is totally unique, whether I notice it or not.
In many ways, I think Every Day moves slower than the rest of the days move along. Perhaps that’s because of what happens Every Day. Our character, for example, is formed because Every Day we practice our belief systems until they ultimately become ‘ways of life.’ The habits we get into, the paths that are worn in the grass on college campuses, the calluses that appear on a carpenter’s hands, all those things occur because the same attitudes and actions were practiced until they became a way of life. Because students took short cuts across the grass in their rush to get to Freshman’s English Every Day, the grass beneath their feet couldn’t survive that relentless foot traffic, and a path was worn. Every Day, a carpenter’s hand holds the same hammer in the same way until a callus forms, evidence that what takes place every day can have a hardening effect on an otherwise soft and pliable skin.
Sometimes, the habits we allow ourselves to experience or fall into may seem a reasonable, normal part of life. But listening to and observing life with a critical eye and ear can make all the difference when we navigate the happening we engage in … Every Day. You see, Every Day’s not like Today. Today’s only 24 hours long. And Every Day’s not like Yesterday, either. Yesterday is only one word long. But Every Day is not one word; it’s two words, unless I choose to run those words together like I run the moments of my life together in my rush to get to life’s next thing on my list. The New Living Translation of Matt. 6:25, the words of the Lord Jesus: “… I tell you not to worry about everyday life —whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food and your body more than clothing?”
I’ve got to work on not running those two words together. There’s a world of difference between a common, everyday life, and a totally unique life —Every Day —with Jesus.