No Guarantee Of Tomorrow

• What would you like to be doing 20 years from now?

• How often do you tell your family and closest friends how you feel about them?

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 are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
James 4:13 – 14

Few people say, “I’ll see you tomorrow … unless I die before then” or “If I’m still alive this weekend, we should go see a movie.” We all make plans, whether it’s a summer vacation, a college choice or a career. We naturally assume that we will live long enough for those plans to come to fruition.

There’s nothing wrong with that approach. Those verses in James aren’t telling us that God gets mad when we make plans for the future. They are pointing out that our plans are always secondary to God’s plans for us. We can assume we’ll get old before we die, but that doesn’t mean it will happen. None of us knows for sure how long we’ll live.

We can either be depressed by that thought or we can use it as an inspiration to make every moment count. If there’s no guarantee of tomorrow, let’s make sure we spend today wisely. Feel like telling a loved one how much you appreciate them? Do it today. Feel like apologizing to someone you’ve hurt? Do it today. There’s no guarantee you’ll have a chance to do it tomorrow.

PRAYER
Dear God, we praise you for the fact that you hold today and tomorrow in your hands. Give us the wisdom to know how to spend our time in the best way possible. Amen.