We Do Not Know What Tomorrow Will Bring

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” James 4:13-15 (NKJV)

“Tomorrow” can be a word pregnant with hope or filled with dread. We do not know what tomorrow will bring despite our best prognostications. We plan. We hope. We prepare. But in the end we really have no idea what will come tomorrow.

Recently I have been thinking about an older couple who were planning for a bright future. They had taken steps and made purchases that would help them fulfill their dreams only to have cancer strike one of them down quickly and severely. Such are the vicissitudes of life.

It is frustrating when hardship or tragedy brings all of our plans to nothing. Yet James, in the verse above, warns us of that very thing. We must always live with only one foot on earth and the other set squarely in heaven. We must keep looking up even as we try to look ahead.

It is not wrong to make plans and prepare for tomorrow. Yet we must always remember that God is sovereign and He will have the final say as to whether our plans are fulfilled or whether His plan is to call us home. We are strangers and wanderers on this earth, ever moving toward our true destination in heaven to be with our Lord.

Make plans for tomorrow. Have hopes and dreams about the future. But also keep your eyes heavenward, remembering you have a Lord who is the Master of your fate. He has his own plans for you and His own time table, and He holds your tomorrow in His hands.

Prayer: Dear Lord, we hope and plan and prepare, but is You who holds our fate and future. Help us to never forget that. Amen.

Karlton Douglas

Copyright 2016