"One Day at a Time" was a TV comedy/drama that ran for 9 seasons in the mid-'70s to mid-'80s. It depicted a family in Indianapolis--a single mom with two daughters, starting their life over after a divorce. The daughters were in their teens as the series began; their age-appropriate life circumstances, and the divorced mom navigating her life with all of those implications in that era, did indeed depict the necessity of living "one day at a time" to get through it all. Since 2017 a "reboot" of this show has been on, set in Los Angeles with a Hispanic family depicting their life challenges and the "one day at a time" approach to engaging with their life experiences.
Life can challenge us. Sometimes we find ourselves just kind of sailing along on calm waters, where the day-to-day realities are smooth and we engage them almost as a default setting. Other times we find ourselves challenged by the day-to-day, and we can't just "fall into" what needs to be done, but rather need to focus, and focus pretty hard. I was recalling recently my few years of "underemployment" when my bills outstripped my income, and I felt like I needed to make intentional moral decisions about every penny I spent. How do we get through those times? It helps to take a "one day at a time" approach--a focused, intentional, aware one day at a time approach.
Anyone who works the 12 steps because of addiction of whatever type knows that "one day at a time" is how one gets through. It takes focus. It takes being aware and intentional--it takes knowing yourself and what "triggers" falling into bad choices and unhelpful behaviors. It takes taking seriously that, as the steps say, life can get unmanageable and only a power greater than one's self can restore one to sanity.
We are entering the season of Lent in the church year--that six-week time of preparation for Easter, when we get a fuller and deeper sense of who we are as individuals in relationship to that higher power, and how our own individual personalities and traits reflect those of humanity in general. Really, we are all in need of that higher power to restore us to sanity. We all benefit from a "one day at a time" approach that keeps us from slacking off on focused attentive choice-making.
This Lent, we will use the song "Day by Day" from the musical "Godspell" to look at that journey of self-awareness. The song's title are the first words of the song--sung twice. Day by day is where we begin to nurture our relationship to God.
Joshua 24:14-15
14‘Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.’
Matthew 6:11, 25-34
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
25‘ Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
34‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.