We’ve all uttered those words. You may have said that already this morning. Usually, a series of unfortunate events spark such an emotional response. We feel like the day was a loss. We accomplished nothing, and very little went our way. We conclude that the day served no real purpose. “It’s not my day.”
Here is the problem with that statement: it's self-centered. We are making that assessment of the quality of that day based on how we experienced it. The subjective standard is us. Whether we had a good day or a bad day is determined by whether things went our way, we got what we wanted, and we were happy with the outcomes. It's all about us when we say, “It's not my day.”
“It’s not my day.” Truthfully, though, it never was. King David wrote, “This is the day that the Lord has made…” It was always His day. It was a day He wrote long ago. He had authored the day before you showed up on the scene. In the designing of that day, He was more concerned with His grand plan, the grand narrative He was writing for all of humanity. He saw the day as a brief moment in time where He could accomplish His will, His plan, & His purposes. While the quality of your day mattered to Him, He was more focused on the fact that through the events of that day, He could impact your life. He saw that even though you might consider it “not your day,” He could use that day to mold you, shape you, and grow you. He also saw that through that day, He could impact others. He could impact other people that you know and people you don’t know through the events of your day. He could do that immediately in ways you might see but also in ways you may never see. He could impact other people today and someday in the future. He can even impact others through your “bad day” long after you’ve shuffled off this third rock from the sun. He saw the grand story.
Believing that God has a purpose for your life means that He's at work every day, good and bad. It means that if you draw breath, there’s a reason. But what it really means is you have to trust Him. That’s easy when it’s sunshine and rainbows with unicorns dancing through the meadow. We also have to trust him when it's dark as night because of the unrelenting storm. We have to trust Him when we feel alone, abandoned, and angry. We have to trust Him that even though it is a bad day or even a series of bad days, He is working in our lives and through our lives to accomplish a plan greater than our individual selves. We have to trust that even when we feel like “it's not our day,” it's His day, and He is a good and loving God who can use all things for His plan and our long-term good.
So it may not feel like your day, but rest, because it is His day. He loves you, watches over you, and cares for you, which, when you think about it, makes every day "your day."
"This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." - Ps. 118:24