Faithbase

You're going to die. Have you ever just thought to yourself, meh, I'll do it tomorrow? I have. I was thinking about doing that with this video today. But I heard a quote that goes, tomorrow is a thief that steals today's ambition. And I thought about what a brilliant line that was because of what it points out in us as human beings to procrastinate. There's an idea that if we don't have to deal with it today or if we can push it back until tomorrow, things are going to be easier or we just don't have to deal with stuff when we can put things off. But I think that's a really frustrating and actually kind of a dangerous mentality to have on a lot of things. The book of James in chapter 4 talks about this idea of not knowing what's going to happen tomorrow. We don't want to be super careful about crafting all these plans so late into the future and trying to have every aspect of our life planned out in 5, 10, 15, in these 20 year increments. Because if we're not paying attention to where we're going, if we're not hustling and if we're not getting after it today, then we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. We all know the old line from Dead Poets Society, the concept of carpe diem, to really go after it and to really attack the day in a big way. And I think this is particularly important for those of us who follow Jesus for two reasons. One, because we don't know what time we have. There's that practical reality of not knowing when our time is going to be up here in this world. The second thing is we don't know if the people that we're going to come into contact. Somebody once said that the idea is you might be the only Jesus with skin on that people ever see. And I think about the value of that and really what it does in terms of motivating me to have kingdom conversations with people. Not forgetting to pray for that person, being willing to share about my story or my testimony when somebody asks me how I came to know the Lord, being willing to sit down and pray with people even though I'm uncomfortable, being willing to ask a stranger if they need help or something and putting myself in situations that cause me to stretch today because I know that right now this is what I've got. We always talk about this concept of carpe diem or seize the day or hustle or get after it for ourselves and in our own world. We want to create our own future. We want to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and make sure we do X, Y, Z in these fantastic ways. And these things aren't necessarily bad, but sometimes they can run contrary to why we actually need to seize the day, especially if you're a follower of Christ, because you don't know what time someone else may have. It might be the last day that you ever see them, not necessarily in a morbid sense, although that could be true, but your past just might not cross again. If you need to be having conversations with people about the gospel, about reconciliation, about forgiveness in their life, whatever it is, you don't want to miss that opportunity. I know that there are times in relationships that I wish I could just have one more chance to sit and talk with that person and talk about how God loves them or about how God cares about them because, again, if you are the only Jesus with skin on that people meet, you want to take advantage of every opportunity that you have to try and connect with and love on that individual because of how important it is and mainly because of how God sees them. And so this helps us understand that there's more than one aspect and more than one angle through which to view this carpe diem kind of lens. It's not just always about the self. It's not just always about my hustle. It's not just always about my future. In fact, we can often be better suited if we think about somebody else's future, somebody else's hustle, getting people to where they need to be in their relationships and in their walk, even if they're not a believer. So if you want to talk more about this, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram. I'm at joshua underscore carmen. I would love to chat with you there and as always, have a great week.