So much of our lives are spent planning or fearing tomorrow. Some anticipate tomorrow with a zeal for the future. Yet, these feelings can rob us of the plan God has for us today. It is so hard to live in the moment while looking to the future. It’s a balancing act that we all have trouble with from time to time. When our children are young, and we are in the middle of “getting set” in our jobs, it seems that all our thoughts are about the future. We plan for the future with our money, wanting to make the wisest investments. We buy homes that will hopefully yield a profit when we sell. We start planning where our children will go to school, because we want them to have the best education possible, so they too can get on this merry-go-round of monetary advancement for the future.
While it is true and commanded we be wise stewards of all our resources, storing up things should not consume us. Proverbs 27:1 tells us to not be presumptuous about what we will do because our lives are not in our own power. It is arrogance that approaches life this way. We fail to realize there is so much in life that we have no control over.
Proverbs 27:1 “Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.”
In Luke 12:13-15, Jesus answers a young man about his inheritance. He warns him of becoming covetous because a man’s life is not based on the abundance of things. Later in the chapter, he warns a rich man of planning and consuming simply for the sake of heaping goods and pleasure on self. He calls the man a fool and requires his soul that night.
In Matthew 6:33-34, we are told what to seek, and that is God and his righteousness. We are told to not think about tomorrow, meaning don’t be anxious about it, because it will take care of itself. There is enough to take care of today without borrowing trouble from tomorrow. Trouble, that may never come.
Matthew 6:33-34 “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
James also speaks on this subject. They were forming their plans as if they were the master of their own fate, acting as if God was not involved in their lives. They were worried about all the things they were going to do. James instructs them to plan after they had prayed about something. The instruction is “if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
James 4:13-15 “Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.”
It’s only natural to talk about tomorrow, and the things you’ve planned to do, but no one knows if tomorrow will even come for us. We do know that everyone has a day appointed unto death and that judgment will follow. Therefore, there are some plans we need to make and have certainty about. This plan is the plan to follow Christ in everything. To come to him as a sinner seeking forgiveness and determine to live for him. While we are not to boast about our future, we can boast about our eternity, because of Jesus’ work at Calvary. Live today as if you were facing Christ tomorrow. If we are in Christ we can approach today like Winnie the Pooh when he was talking to Piglet.
“What day is it?” asked Pooh.
“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day,” said Pooh.
Pooh’s simplistic answer is the way we should approach each day. We should rejoice in today for it is the Lord’s day. Sometimes we are so busy looking out for what may happen tomorrow, that we don’t take time to enjoy today. Don’t waste a minute of the precious day God has given you.
