Today

I was quite moved this weekend on the importance of "today".

It was a pleasure to hear my old youth pastor talk. He is now pastoring in Prince Rupert. I still see the same conviction and excellent words I remember being passed onto me in my early teens. The climax of the sermon scripture was the passage in Joshua chapter 24.
"Choose today whom you will serve! Whether the gods which your fathers worshiped that were beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah."

Today. Today is an important day because it is right now. It is not focussing on what you have done, or on what you had plans to do. Today is the day that is directly and quickly impacted by the choices you make. You can guess at tomorrows, and fret or relish in the past, but those are all interpreted under the lens of today. You can be who you weren't yesterday. In fact yesterday shouldn't have a strong hold on who you can be today, unless it is a foundation you wish to be builiding upon.

In the book, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, there was a quote I read as I drove home. A woman desribed her life as a "history of horrors". Her friend wrote back to her, "you are not a history of horrors. The meaning of redemption is that you do not have to be your history. Nothing is plainer to me than that you are not your history."

You do not have to be your history. The chains we wear, which are often good things, dont have to bind us. Our house, wealth, savings account, dogs, comfort, vices, self-hate don't have to be in our today decisions.
Nothing is ever that simple... or is it? I often find myself in self-reflection being drawn to Jesus' question to a man, "do you want to be healed?"
Do I want to throw off my sickness? My comfortable, easy to manage, comfortable plagues? My lifestyles of living that I know are wrong, but fit so well.

Anyways, this weekend I was encouraged about today. While my "history of horrors" may be small, and frankly not very scary, in comparison to others, I live in fear often enough to need that truth, "you are not a history of horrors. You are redeemed and you do not have to be your history."

Choose today whom you will serve. What we do is never not worship. What are you ascribing worth to?