A Word in Season: Today and Tomorrow (Proverbs 27:1)

The Uncertainty of Tomorrow and the Limits of Human Planning

Some people seem to be taken by surprise every day. They're just not sure what's going to happen or how and when it's meant to work out. Others try to plan obsessively and project into the future, sometimes as many as years in advance.

Proper planning, to be fair, might depend on who you are and what you do and what it means to have a proper stewardship of your time and your energy in serving God. But, at least for me, once I start getting beyond a few months or certainly beyond a year or so, I often warn people in effect, write that down in the faintest of pencil because it's very possible that things will get rubbed out or rescheduled before we reach that point.

We look ahead and we just say, I'm not sure how confident I can be of where I'll be and what I'll be able to do that far in the future. But it typically might be weeks or months or years. We are typically fairly confident about what will happen in the next few hours.

Boasting About Tomorrow Versus Humble Dependence on God

Now Proverbs 27 and verse 1 warns us,. Now you'll notice that the wise man there doesn't say don't plan or prepare for tomorrow. There is a proper stewardship again, even in the short term as well as in the long term.

But he warns against boasting. Great swelling claims about what we shall accomplish, building our castles in the air, making our great plans and proposals, offering guarantees, saying that we shall do such and such a thing.

We shall accomplish these great tasks. Why should we not make such foolish boasts? It is because we do not know what a day may bring forth. That brings it very close to home and very close to here, because I can't even guarantee a tomorrow.

I do not know what this day will bring forth, let alone what tomorrow will bring forth. And if I boast about tomorrow, if I make these great swelling claims without any real sense of who God is and my dependence upon him, if I act as an independent, as a genuinely free agent in the sense that I have absolute control over what I do and where I go and I can accomplish what I please, then I am a foolish man.

We hear such foolish boasting so often today, people who are beating their chests and puffing themselves up and declaring what they shall do and how they shall do it, and getting in people's faces with aggression and with arrogance and trampling down upon others.

But none of us mere creatures knows what a day may bring forth, and therefore it is important that we do indeed cast ourselves with humility upon God, that we learn to say, as James tells us, if the Lord wills, I shall do this or that.

Planning? Yes. Preparation? Certainly. But pompous boasting? By no means. We need to remember just how dependent we are upon the Lord and we need to remember that mortal creatures as we are and sinful and foolish in so many respects, we simply do not know what a day may bring forth and God may puncture our proud bubble, God may bring down those who lift themselves up and God may be pleased also to exalt those who are humbled.

Redeeming Today and Turning to Christ Now

But there's something else to bear in mind as well, that not knowing what a day may bring forth means that we need to make the most of the day that we do have. There are important things that cannot be put off until tomorrow.

There are some priorities that need to be dealt with today. If you are not yet a Christian, then today needs to be the day of your salvation, for you do not know what a day may bring forth. Now is the time to close with Christ Jesus.

Now is the time to repent of your sins and cast yourself upon the mercy of a forgiving God. Now is the time to rest your soul upon the Lord Christ. Now may be the time to reconcile with friends or family members.

Now may be the time to put right what has for too long been wrong. Now is the time to do what pleases God, not presuming upon or boasting about tomorrow, for not one of us knows what a day may bring forth but God alone.