Article for the week of May 2, 2007

Everyone's Favorite Day...Someday

What is your favorite day? Wednesday, “over the hump” day when the work week is half over and the rest of the week will be a breeze? Is it Friday, the end of the work week, time to quit working and start playing? Is it Saturday, play day, no pressure day, a day for “doing your own thing?” For some it is Sunday, a day of rest, a day to get over the effects of Saturday and get ready to go “back to the grind” of Monday. Monday is nobody’s favorite day, so far as I can tell.

THANKSGIVING is a favorite with some, a day to “pig out” on special goodies, when nobody cares if you blow your diet. Many insist that “CHRISTMAS” is the best day, a day when most people are better to each other than at most other times of the year, when “peace and good will” are words often heard. I know some who wish it could be “Christmas every day” of the year. How about your BIRTHDAY, when others honor you and say they are glad you were born and give you things to prove how important you are?

Actually the day that seems to be a favorite with most people is SOMEDAY. Someday is never today. It is almost any day after today. It gives one a false sense of hope when he says “I’ll have it someday. It will come to me some day.” It gives one a false sense of security when he says, “I’ll do it someday,” as in “I’ll become a Christian someday. I’ll get right with God someday.” But he says this while continuing to enjoy the pleasures of sin in the present.  Felix was a someday person. He told the preacher Paul, “When I have a convenient season I will call you” (Acts 24:25). Just another way of promising something for someday.  King Agrippa was “almost persuaded to be a Christian” (Acts 26:28). That is like saying, “Maybe I will be a Christian, someday.”

If the truth were known, everyone’s favorite day is someday. That is the day we are going to get organized, get busy, get to work. Someday is when we will obey the gospel and become a real Christian, a member of the Lord’s church. Someday we will admit our waywardness and unfaithfulness – our sins – and get right with God again. But that kind of someday is like the mañana that never comes. Yet people go on, as if they thought they would live on earth forever and have unlimited opportunities, as many as they want or need to “get right with God.”

There is a sure and certain someday coming to every person. We are reminded of it every time some person dies. “And it is appointed to all men once (someday) to die, and after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). If you do not want to fear what that someday of God will bring to you, heed these words of the apostle Paul: “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold today is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). On that day when God’s judgment comes, no one will say he can still do what is required for salvation someday. All one will be able to do then is offer feeble excuses for failure to do what he should have done long before. But the time and opportunities will be forever gone. All days on earth will have ended.

We can sum all of this up with some words by hymn writer Tillit S. Tedlie. Here’s how he puts it:

 Someday you’ll stand at the bar on high,
 Someday your record you’ll see;
 Someday you’ll answer the question of life.
 What will your answer be?

– Gerald Cowan
(Minister of the church of Christ in Dongola, IL)
 

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