Many of us walk through a world of sepia.

Maybe life was more vivid once. You went to bed and couldn’t wait to wake up. You loved your job, or were engaged to be married, or just had your first child. But life changed, and slowly, the colors drained from your days. Now you wake up, walk through another bland day, and lie down, simply to do it all over again tomorrow. The calendar has become 365 shades of brown.

We need God to awaken us to today. We need him to remind us again that “this is the day that the Lord has made” (Psalm 118:24) — a unique day, a meaningful day, a day that comes to us from the hands of divine love. We need God to help us resolve, as Clyde Kilby writes, that we will “not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities.”

In order to come awake to today, we probably don’t need to do something spectacular. We probably just need to meditate on the ordinary glories we so often forget. We probably need to look up, around, and ahead again

Look Up

Look up to God today.

God is. The most basic fact about today is also the most wild and wonderful: God is. Behind all that we see and feel today is an eternal dance of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: never changing, ever happy, a constant volcano of goodness and joy.

He is the Love beneath all love (1 John 4:8), the Beauty behind all beauty (Psalm 27:4), the Truth below all truth (John 14:6). He is the Creator, the Lord, and the King; the Shepherd, the Word, and the Savior; the Comforter, the Guide, and the Teacher. He is the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ (John 1:18) — and he is.

God is here. “We can’t talk about God behind his back,” John Webster said. Nor can we think, breathe, sleep, or eat there. There is no such place as “behind his back” — not on Icarus, nine billion light years away, nor in our living rooms. God is here, in this moment, holding us together by the power of his word (Hebrews 1:3). Breathe in, breathe out, and feel his speech expand your lungs. He hems you in, behind and before — seeing you, searching you, knowing you (Psalm 139:5).

God is for you. In Christ, this God is for you today — with all of his infinite heart and soul (Jeremiah 32:41). Look out at the sunrise, and feel his new mercies (Lamentations 3:22–23). Look behind you, and see his goodness on your heels (Psalm 23:6). Open his book, and hear him rehearse the story of his love (Romans 5:8). Open your mouth, and pour your heart into his hands (Psalm 62:8).

Then, go out into your day, and know that he is with you — inside of you (John 14:17). He will help you. He will strengthen you. He will uphold you with his righteous right hand (Isaiah 41:10). And he will weave whatever happens today, no matter how humdrum or heartbreaking, into a tapestry of goodness and mercy and love (Romans 8:28).

- Scott Hubbard