“Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth” (Proverbs 27: 1 KJV).
Tomorrow fascinates us all. There’s a lot of talk about it, and we float a lot of plans in it. But tomorrow only exists in our minds, and that’s the only place where tomorrow has ever existed. Sure, it may become reality if we live to see another day, but for now, it only exists in our imagination.
Tomorrow is that block of time in our immediate future that we have already stocked full of planned activities and promises that most often, when today presents them to us for fulfillment, we put them off for another tomorrow.
If we could not fill our minds with an endless line of tomorrows, we would not be procrastinators. Procrastinators do not live for today. They live for the next tomorrow.
Tomorrow has never existed except in the imagination. No one has ever lived through a tomorrow. But we believe the tomorrow we’ve imagined will come because it is tomorrow that ushers in today. Our tomorrows are in our minds, and in them rest our hope and plans for change, relief, help, opportunity, and success.
Since tomorrow is only a figment of our imagination, so are our plans for tomorrow. We may be fortunate enough to see tomorrow slip out of our future and become the now of today and see all our plans fulfilled, but there is no guarantee that we will.
Tomorrow is out of our reach. We cannot go into our future. Our future comes to us one day at a time. Tomorrow is yet to come. Yesterday is past and gone. Only today is reality. Tomorrow becomes today to pass away into yesterday.
Tomorrow is usually seen as being more important than today. We keep saying the best is yet to come. And so, we waste another day for tomorrow’s sake. Someone said, “If you didn’t do better today than you did yesterday, why should you be given another tomorrow?” Assuming on tomorrow can make us negligent on today.
It’s not a sin to plan for the future; to picture in our minds the activities we plan to do once the imagined tomorrow becomes the reality of today. But we should recognize the fact that there is One whose will is more important than our will and should say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live, and do this, or that” (James 4: 15). We don’t know what tomorrow holds, but we know Who holds tomorrow.
Jesus promised to come back for the church on some future tomorrow. That tomorrow might be today. Then there will be no more tomorrows, just one eternal day.
