“Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.” (Proverbs 27:1)
We take so much for granted in life. We make our plans and we carry them out. We schedule things in advance, expecting tomorrow to be available. To a certain extent, modern life requires this, but the day will come we are reminded that we don’t know everything. We can’t account for everything. So we shouldn’t be smug, resting on the laurels we expect to receive tomorrow like we’ve already won today. Bragging about our plans for the future, taking pride in our goals and ambitions, is setting ourselves up for failure. No matter how realistic we are in dreaming big, eventualities may rise that waylay us. We could get excited and run ahead of God and find, when we get to tomorrow, he had other plans.
God knows his plans for tomorrow, but we do not. Only God knows what the broken fallen world will throw at us and how he plans to navigate us around it and bring us peace and strengthened character, and him glory, and the kingdom advanced–if we trust him. This is why James instructed us to say, “If the Lord wills, I will do this and that.”
Dream big, but don’t count on anything but this: what God has specifically promised us, that he will do. However, we may not know how he will do it, and we rarely know when. We still can’t boast in tomorrow. We can only know that one day we will win a crown in Heaven. We will be a saint dwelling in a glorified body like our risen Lord’s, set free from the troubles and brokenness of this life.
If you’re Abraham or Sarah, and God’s promised you a child even though you’re old, you will have that baby. If you’re a slave in Egypt or Babylon, He will free you and deliver you to the land he has promised, even if he has to part oceans or soften the hearts of unbelieving kings. If you’re Elijah, Elisha, Ezekiel, or Jeremiah, and, God has given you a message to deliver to his people, keep on working toward that goal, knowing he will work through you to bring it to those he wants to hear it.
Lord, grant us the humility and wisdom not to boast of the prizes we plan to win for the chickens that haven’t hatched yet, but please also give us the courage and faith to trust that what you have promised us and secured for us in the future, we will receive when you will it. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.