Tomorrow

"Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow." James 4:14

Tomorrow - The Greek word aurion really means the time that comes right after. So, of course, it gets translated as tomorrow, the time right after today. But what James says in this verse is not true just about tomorrow. It is true about every "next" moment of human life. We don't know what the next moment will bring. Human life is always lived on the moving edge of that smallest of separations between what can never be done again and what is not yet done.

As I reflect back on this year, I see that I never had to wait for tomorrow for life to send me into an upheaval. One minute things seem so normal. The next minute, life was chaos. We can plan for the future, but the future rarely cares about our plans. This is the sense of James' warning. You really have no idea what is going to happen next and more importantly, you have no control over it either.

Take a moment to recall those times in the last year when life took a sudden turn. My guess is that most of those moments were unexpected. I believe that God engineers the universe to be intentionally unpredictable. In spite of the incredible order to things, and the persistent relationship of cause and effect in the inanimate world, human life resists predictability at the only level that counts the individual level. Sure, we can say that statistics show that 1 in every 20 American will contract heart disease this year, or that there will be approximately 40 deaths on the highway, or that 3 million children will be born. But none of that says a thing about what will happen to you, and what happens to you is the only statistic that counts. God inserts a little chaos into every life on purpose. He wants us to face our lack of control and turn in dependence to Him. He is God of the Universe. He is sovereign. And He does not want us to forget it.

There are a few things that I know for certain about tomorrow. They are the few very important things. I know that I am God's child and that no matter what happens; He will be with me tomorrow. I know that tomorrow is in His hands even if it is not in mine. And I know that life for me extends to every tomorrow, forever.

James warns us. When we begin to think we have all of our horizons planned, we are being foolish. None of us knows the future. But there is one horizon that we can plan on with confidence. It is the one guaranteed by God for all His children to live forever with Him.

- Taken from Today's Word