I once heard of a man who, when he received his daily newspaper, would put the new paper on top of a stack of a month’s worth of papers he had next to his chair and then would pull the month-old paper from the bottom of the stack and read it instead of the new one. When asked why he did this, he replied that if there were a crisis in the world it would already be resolved by the time he knew of it and thus he didn’t need to worry about it. There are certainly times when it is best not to try to do something about an issue but rather just let time take care of it. However, there are some things that need to be seen to at once. How many times have you heard Ben Franklin’s proverb, “a stitch in time saves nine”? This is a time-tested saying because so often it is true. If you put off taking care of a small problem until it becomes a big problem, it will be much harder to fix.
Many people seem to approach Christianity with the philosophy, “Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow”. Whether it is a matter of obeying the gospel or working to grow as a Christian, they seem to feel that tomorrow would be a better day than today to do it. The problem with this approach is that sooner or later you run out of tomorrows. We have no guarantee beyond today. The Bible is full of warnings that life is uncertain. As James points out in James 4:14, “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.” In 1 Peter 1:24 the apostle Peter warns, “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” Procrastination may not be a big deal in many areas of life, but in matters religious it can cost us our souls. Don’t put off doing what God wants you to do. “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Corinthians 6:2)