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| “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.” |
| —Proverbs 27:1 |
It was her fourteenth birthday. She was thrilled that she was growing up. Soon, she hoped, people would begin treating her more like an adult than a child. He fondest wish as she bent over the blow out the candles on her pink-frosted birthday cake was, “Two more years—just two more years until I can learn to drive.”
Just one week later, she slipped on the tennis court, hit her head on the stanchion that supported the net, and died instantly. She never learned how to drive. She never reached age sixteen. She never experienced anything more that this life had to offer. She had placed all her hopes, all her dreams in the future, even to the point of setting aside her enjoyment of the here and now.
Yes, it’s a very tragic story. But, it is one repeated over and over again, day after day, throughout our world. Instead of enjoying the present, people live in expectation of happiness at some point in the near or distant future.
King Solomon understood the importance of focusing on “today” when he wrote these words in Proverbs 27:1:
Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
This simple Proverb has great power and great wisdom. It reminds me of the parable Jesus told, as recorded in Luke 12:16-21:
And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
We who follow Jesus must take every step forward with care and caution. We must not run ahead of God. We must not presume to know what the future holds. Rather, we must allow plenty of room for the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us along the right pathway.
As we begin this new day, let’s acknowledge that we can take comfort from knowing that God will lead us forward step-by-step. We can remain hopeful for the future. But, we can also rest in the knowledge that only God truly knows what the future holds.
