A Great Day to Be Alive

Every time I turn on my BlackBerry phone, I am greeted with a customized message: "It's a great day to be alive!" I had it on my previous phone as well. Why? Because it serves as a personal reminder that things could have been a whole lot worse. Stop and think about it. If God did not allow you to wake up this morning, everything else would be irrelevant. All your unfinished business would remain unfinished, your friends and family would be without whatever it was that you brought into their lives, and your purpose for being on earth would have come to an end. Consider, however, that God in His graciousness allowed you to wake up, in your right mind (even though for some of us others would say that was questionable), and so we are blessed to have at least one more day to not only do the things we want to do, and things we love to do, but equally important - to get things right with man and God if that is where we are in our lives. Another day to glorify God in everything we do.

In Psalm 118:24 the Psalmist David declares: "This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it" (KJV). We can "borrow" the verse from its original context and say this should be the attitude of every believer at the start of each new day. Yes, it is easy to take for granted the fact that we have been waking up every morning for the past twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, or whatever number of years we have been doing so. We tend to somehow forget that tomorrow is promised to no one. Truth be known we have a sense of entitlement to it. How many times have we casually said to a colleague: "See you tomorrow" or "See you on Monday"? James reminds us: "Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that" (4:13-15). Simply put, we cannot and should not take tomorrow for granted.

Our reality is that every morning we wake up is a good reason to praise God. He didn't have to allow us that privilege. We may have gotten up with a million things on our minds and with seemingly endless chores to do, but amidst all of that let us remember none of that would matter if we had entered into our eternal sleep. So amidst the hustle and bustle, let us purpose to declare: "This is the day which the LORD hath made; I will rejoice and be glad in it." Regardless of whatever you are dealing with today, it is still a great day to be alive!