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Tomorrow

Sometimes simple questions have very hard to understand answers.  It was one of those times when 4 year-old Emily ask me “When is tomorrow?”   My first response was “tomorrow never comes.”  I could tell by the puzzled look on her face that I needed to come up with a more sensible answer.  As I tried to intelligently answer the question, I found myself stumbling over a jumble of confusing words.  “Tomorrow is the day after today except it never comes so when tomorrow comes the next day is tomorrow.”  Fortunately for me the answer satisfied her desire for more knowledge or further questions!  My mind began to ponder the elusive tomorrow.  If it never comes, why do I fret and worry so much about it coming? Jesus had a few things to say about worrying and being obsessed over the basic needs of life.  He said, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.  Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about it’s own things.  Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”  (Matthew 6: 33-34)

James said we should not boost about our plans for tomorrow, what we will do, where we will go or the profits we will earn.  “You do not know what will happen tomorrow.  For what is your life?  It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’” (James 4: 14-15)

 The Preacher in Ecclesiastes struggled with the vanity of life. He too fumbled for words, “Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come by those who will come after”  (Ecclesiastes 1:11) and “that which is has already been, and what is to be has already been; and God requires an account of the past.”  (Ecclesiastes 3:15).

In 1950 Ira Stamphill very eloquently penned the words to the following song.

I don’t know about tomorrow, I just live from day to day. 

I don’t borrow from its sunshine, for its skies may turn to gray.

I don’t worry o’er the future, for I know what Jesus said,

And today I’ll walk beside Him, for He knows what is ahead.

Many things about tomorrow, I don’t seem to understand;

But I know who holds tomorrow, And I know who holds my hand.

Maybe I will wait until tomorrow to worry.

By Pat Hertzler

April 11, 2004