Sufficient Unto The Day Is The Evil Thereof

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." (Matthew 6:34). On any given day, we have plenty of evil, temptations, tragedies, challenges and heavens to try and deal with. Most days, the evil right in front of us would require all of our time and attention and strength and resolve to overcome. So why do we so often see that big pile of evil and think to ourselves, let's go get some more? Let's add all of tomorrow's evil, and all of next week's and next month's and ten years from now's evil to the pile. And while we're at it, let's go dig up all of the regret and might have been's and if only's from yesterday and last week and ten years ago and add that to the pile too. So many of us think ourselves incapable of fighting our battles, but part of the reason for that is we aren't just fighting today's battle but a whole host of misremembered and half imagined battles from the past and the future. We can keep rehashing old evils from long ago but present us can't help past us with their battle. And we can keep wearing ourselves out trying to fight all the possible future evils we can think of, but almost none of the things we imagine are going to come true because we are just not that good at predicting the future. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. We all have enough to deal with today, right now, without borrowing trouble from tomorrow or yesterday. I know that the more we focus on overcoming today's evil, especially by involving the Lord in our struggles, the more confidence we will have day by day that we will be able to overcome the challenges we face, whatever they may be, and the less tempted we will be to fill out hearts and minds with regret and guilt and shame for our past mistakes. I hope we can all learn to be satisfied with facing today's evil only, and that we can let tomorrow and yesterday take care of themselves.