Seize the Day
A few months ago I was going through some old journals of mine from college to find some things to help one of the girls in my youth group. As I was thumbing through the pages, I found a poem, “Seize the Day”, I had written about not worrying about the future.
My student I was working with loved the poem and took a picture of that page in my journal. Even though that was months ago, she just recently shared with me and the other girls in our small group that the poem has really helped her and that she still reads it often. I was touched that something that I had just written in a private quiet time over 20 years ago could be beneficial to someone now.
As I was pondering what to write about this week, that poem came back to mind because of the words “Seize the day”. It felt a little appropriate for many reasons. Primarily at the front of my mind are the graduating seniors that have missed out on so much their senior year because of COVID-19. There are still so many unknowns in the future and so much loss experienced over the past few months. Seize the day seems like some timely advice for graduates who will not get this time back.
It’s also wise counsel for so many others of us who are also affected by this COVID-19 crisis. We can live in the past mourning all of the things that we are missing. We can fret about the future and what is to come (or NOT come) and the timing of it all. OR…We could seize the day and live in this present moment, trusting God.
23 years ago…
In my journal entry I wrote about how God had worked some things out that I had been worrying about. I honestly do not remember any of the specific details of that time (and my journal entry was a bit vague), but the point was that God came through when I just trusted him instead of worrying. I was writing to remind myself to stop worrying, trust in God, and make the most of my present moments in the process.