The ads were all mixed together, tri-folded into one of those bright blue custom baggies that make it easy for a delivery driver to sling them into driveways. Or flowerbeds. Planters.
Here, it’s the Wichita Eagle’s SUNDAY SELECT, but you can insert your local __here__. It’s the same, right? “Summer is heating up! We’ll help keep you COOL!” They didn’t say it’s because early Christmas stuff is leaking into stores faster than a D.C. staffer can generate innuendo.
You’ve seen the memes.
You can’t alter yesterday, but you can mess up a perfectly fine today by fretting about tomorrow.
It’s wise to learn from yesterday. Living back there is another matter. Somebody said you can’t write a new chapter by constantly rereading the old one.
That’s one of the things Proverbs 8:34 means . . . “Blessed the man, blessed the woman, who listens to me, awake and ready for me each morning, alert and responsive as I start my day’s work.” Jesus highlighted that in Luke 9:23: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” And Hebrews 3:13 says much the same thing. “Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today…”
Weird phrasing, but think about it. It’s goofy to call anything ‘today’ other than, well, today. Now.
Perhaps at some point a discerning merchant will stop this crazed “Christmas In March” by an ad campaign featuring posters something like the following.
“In honor of each day’s significance, and in celebration of that day in your life, we respectfully choose to be authentically seasonal in our holiday merchandise. If you’re okay with the cheap stuff, by all means go to our competitors. They’ll have plenty of it. But if you want better quality, thoughtful, tasteful holiday décor, we promise we’ll have it–but not until the preceding holiday is past.”
A great friend often causes me to slow down and think by asking, “How’s your now?”
I think that’s a great question to daily ask your mirror. While it’s, you know, Today. Tomorrow will morph into Today soon enough; but not until tomorrow. Leave it there. Focus on Today.
“How’s your now?”
© D. Dean Boone, June 2017