So why did I choose "The day before payday" as a blog name?

For many years I'd said that whenever I wrote my autobiography, The Day Before Payday would be the title. I haven't gotten around to that autobiography yet, so I thought it would be as good a blog name as any.

The phrase has its rather unglamorous birth in my struggle to handle my finances. A regular indicator  of said struggle: the utility shut-off notices that came in the mail. Back in the day, it always seemed to me that the "last day to pay" on the shutoff notices fell on … you guessed it … the day before payday. That was a major source of frustration to me — until I saw the humor in it.

"The day before payday" also represents, in the "concrete," or natural, a day of what I'll call desperate anticipation. It's akin to the feeling we harbored as children when it seemed that Christmas Day was taking its sweet time to arrive and deliver us our cool presents. The day before payday is the day before the weekend (for many in the workforce); the day before we can finally pay our bills or afford to have that lunch date or go to that movie or go shopping. In the "abstract," or spiritual, it represents the Christian's hope of the eternal reward that awaits the end of our journey as strangers and pilgrims on earth (Hebrews 11:15), and, for those of us who keep up with Bible prophecy, Christ's imminent return to earth.

As I've matured, I realize that we can't spend the day before payday merely sitting around and pining for payday. In the natural and in the spiritual, we'd best be making the most of our wait. To borrow from Jesus' parable, God gave us however many minas/pounds He chose to give us, and said, "Occupy till I come." (Luke 19:13). But there's nothing wrong with looking forward to the coming. It motivates us in our occupation!