Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You re a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. James 4:13-17
Sometimes days are predictive. At other times the days ahead can be as mysterious and anxious as a haunted house. It’s amazing how deep our minds can dig into the plans we have for ourselves in looking toward tomorrow. Unfortunately, our culture, perhaps our bent, is to gather from yesterday and build a structure of our own tomorrow. While there is a place to look back to learn from history, it is a dangerous practice in trusting the Lord and living for Him each day.
In the book of Genesis, Lot’s family was granted a pardon by God to flee the city of Sodom. But as they did, they were to not look back. They were to remain focused on where they were going, not where they had been. And as God rained down fire upon Sodom, Lot’s wife could not help herself and turned back to look. It was a costly mistake as she turned to a pillar of salt.
Granted, people aren’t turning to pillars of salt for looking back on yesterday, but there is a lesson (many lessons actually) here, demonstrating obedience, a pursuit of God’s will, a focus to things to come, the plans He has for me!
And it may be true that my yesterday looms today, but God has gone before me and built my tomorrow! It is today that I live in yesterday’s tomorrow God made just for me! And today, well, He is shaping my tomorrow and whispers in my ear — “Just wait and see what I have planned for you!”
May I not boast of my tomorrow and blame yesterday for it! Instead, may I lift my eyes to the Heavens, in front of me and rejoice in knowing that today was yesterday’s stage for my tomorrow!
The Lord has done it this very day; let us rejoice today and be glad. Psalm 118:24
by: Mark Cruver