The Perfect Day

Over the years I’ve heard people say they had a perfect day. Have you ever had “a perfect day”? Is there even such a thing?

This year, a New York Post article reported that a research study detailed a formula for having a perfect day: spend six hours a day with family, two hours with friends, 1.5 hours socializing, two hours exercising, one hour eating and drinking, six hours at work with only a 15-minute round-trip commute, and one hour on screen time.

Now here’s some interesting math, since this amounts to 19 hours and 45 minutes, leaving only four hours and 15 minutes for everything else we need to do. Most people work more than six hours and commute more than 15 minutes per day. Surprisingly, sleep wasn’t included, though we know we need it. Perhaps some of these activities could be combined, like eating and drinking with family time, or exercising with friends. Specific activities did not appear to be a crucial factor in having a perfect day. Whatever the activities, what mattered was time spent with family and friends.

Many kinds of activities contribute to our enjoyment of life, but most of us have both good and bad days—and perhaps not many we would regard as perfect. Some make a list of things they think make a perfect day, like taking a walk, having a hot bath, sleeping in, playing a sport, doing a kindness for someone, spending time on a favorite hobby, and so on. Some think a perfect day is spending time with a best friend, having an extraordinary experience, or just having an ordinary day that leaves you feeling satisfied and content at the end of it.

Some think of checking their astrological chart to see whether they will have a good or bad day. But astrology is a form of divination and condemned by the Bible (e.g., Deuteronomy 4:19; 18:10–12; Isaiah 47:13–14). In fact, if anyone knows how to have a perfect day, God does.

Proverbs 4:18 says that “the path of the just is like the shining sun, that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day.” Other translations read “till the full light of day” (New International Version), “until broad daylight” (Contemporary English Version) and “until the day be fully come” (Darby Translation). The Bible uses light as a metaphor for Christ, righteousness, truth, wisdom, salvation, purity, divine revelation, and salvation. God is perfect (2 Samuel 22:31; Psalm 18:30), and Jesus Christ said to His disciples, “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect [that is, complete]” (Matthew 5:48).

We human beings should strive to be righteous, but we are far from perfect! We’re incomplete—a “work in progress.” We make mistakes all the time. But God has the solution.

On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus prayed a most wonderful prayer: “I do not pray for these [His disciples] alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us… I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect [complete] in one” (John 17:20–23). That is God’s way to make us perfect.

The Apostle Paul explains that the Son, by offering His death for our sins, “has perfected forever those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). Further, the faithful who have gone before us will “not be made perfect apart from us” (11:40). Perfection—our completion—happens at the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:51–52; 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). Paul also wrote of the “church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven… just men made perfect… receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken” (Hebrews 12:23–24, 28).

That will be a perfect day—with a perfect purpose! You can learn more about that purpose by watching the telecast “This Is the Purpose of Life!” and reading What Is the Meaning of Life?, a free study guide offered by the Living Church of God, available right here at TomorrowsWorld.org.