Blog 3939 – 09.05.2026

One Day At A Time

Some sixty-three years ago walking home from middle school as a boy I watched workmen complete two new houses on the block where I lived with my parents and brother. Amazingly, they accomplish building both of those new homes, start to finish, in a few months.

A few weeks ago builders began the construction of a new home right next to ours. Granted, it is a lot more house than the two I watched go up when I was a boy, but it will take as much as ten months to complete. The small ranch style houses like ours are vastly becoming the minority on our block so I have seen many of these big two story homes completely in the past ten years or so and it is a much more drawn out process than the quick builds I saw in the early nineteen-sixties.

Whether one is building a home, living a life, or eating an elephant, each is a process requiring us to take one bite at a time, one day at a time. And invariably there are unanticipated problems to overcome, unplanned delays, that require patience, perseverance, persistence. The three p’s of completing any task successfully. Shoddy work, short cuts, skipping important steps, the three s’s, are all surefire ways to end up with an unhappy and a costly outcome.

The hypnotic lure to dwell on the past or to try to rush the future often prevent us from focusing on this day, the only day we can really live. I remind my self daily: “This is the day that the Lord and I have made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White