A day doesn’t seem like much time until you realize how much can happen in a day. A few years ago in his book, In One Day, Tom Parker said that each day in the United States: 11,000 people get bitten by a dog; 13,000 people get married; 20,000 people write the President; 87,000 people have a car accident; and 180,000 people move into a new home. The facts clearly show, even though I’m sure they vary from year to year, that as the old song goes, “What a difference a day makes”. In an even deeper way, every day is an opportunity for each of us to build up the Reign of God in our own little part of the world. Today you and I will meet people, face circumstances and have opportunities that will come along only today, never to be repeated. For example, the chance we have to offer a word of condolence or encouragement to someone may well come and go today and not offer itself again. The truth, the peace, the joy, and the forgiveness that we can spread today is often either spread today or lost forever. So why do we procrastinate? Why delay? Today is never to be repeated. The poet Arnold Bennet put it like this: “You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions!”
