Tomorrow

Tomorrow

3/9/17

A common trait that humans have is planning and how we want to know what tomorrow will have in store for our lives, this is called being prepared.  While preparation is not a bad thing there is a difference in this truth versus trying to understand what lies ahead for our lives.  It is this aspect that we cannot predict yet worry so much about and thus waste great effort and exhaust physical and spiritual resources for nothing.  God wants us to prepare of course but we need to trust and rely on Him for those issues of tomorrow and a great way to understand our lives for tomorrow is to live today and learn from our history.  Our history lies within God and everything that He has provided for our lives and if we solely rely on His Word and Ways there will be nothing that we cannot handle tomorrow.

Most of you know that I am a huge history nut and my concept is that the more history that I can understand the better off I can be for today.  Some of you know that I was adopted when I was a baby and that it took almost 44 years for a reunification of my biological family and myself.  While I did not actively seek out my biological family, my mother persisted on me trying to find out something about them even if it was just for the medical history side of things.  I had no real intentions in compiling any information on them since in my heart and eyes I had only one family that I knew and I was good with that.  But after the reunion occurred, I began to learn many things about my life that I had questioned in the years before and while my feelings for my family did not change one bit I was glad that I had some answers to fill in the blanks to these small questions of mine.

When I was 35 years old I had a heart attack, and for the most part should have died for the main vessel that leads and then feeds the heart was 99% blocked, they call this vessel the widow maker for usually when this artery is blocked the person is usually dead before they hit the ground.  Upon learning my biological family’s history I found out that I had a few uncles who dropped dead of such a heart attack, a pattern that I was following and a bit of history that I could use to prevent such an event occurring in my life today and tomorrow.  Modernity has its advantages in many areas of our lives but while these advances do wonders for the improvement of our living spaces they still cannot provide specific information concerning our future.  History serves as a learning curve and rightly should be studied for such events, but today is a gift that should be cherished based on our foundational past, one that is well described through God and His Word.

A wonderful passage in the Bible demonstrates this truth about our lives and it is one that has been used many times as well.  For the most part, this verse has been used in a context strictly referring to tomorrow and how not to worry about tomorrow for none of us are guaranteed that tomorrow will greet us with a friendly stance.  While this is true and is a wise statement we must also take into consideration that our history is what defines us and how through our history we can continue on the present course or understand the faults that we made and correct them before they become uncontrollable.  Proverbs 27:1 states: “Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.”

When I was in high school and playing football, one of the more tedious things that our team did was to sit down and watch films about the opponent that we were to play next.  We would spend what would seem like an eternity going over and studying their plays and how they would execute them during their last few games.  All of this effort was completed so that we would understand how they ran plays and what we could expect from their playbook.  Now, we had no idea of what plays they would run a few days down the road but we could grasp a great deal of information about the players and coaches from this type of studying.  Sometimes it paid off well and other not so much but we had the opportunity to think about what was going to be done when the time came to react to the current situation.

It is this concept that Proverbs 27:1 is wanting us to achieve for God understands that none of us are guaranteed tomorrow but if we do wake up and witness another sunrise we should be totally prepared for what is about to occur.  None of us knew what the day’s events were going to be on September 11, 2001, but many of us were prepared for such a national insult that day.  In many ways, we did not learn from history about what humans were capable of doing towards others especially on our own soil and if we would have relied on history a bit more maybe some issues could have been different that day.  I still question the knowledge of what occurred on that day, not as a conspirator but as one who studies human behavior and realizes exactly what doors are open to our enemies through such actions.  Both physical and spiritual aspects of our lives are affected through such involvement and it should be noted, strongly, that if we would have understood the Bible and our human history together more, we would have noticed so many other issues coming before they arrived.

The huge mistake that many of us make is that we tend to ignore history on both a personal and national level and this is evident when an event takes place like 9/11 or the bombings in Aleppo, or the attacks in Paris because the reactions to such events are always depicted as one of shock and horror.  We should be leery of what the human mind can do for when we understand and deeply know that we are the only species that can kill from a distance, that truth alone should bolster our hearts to know just exactly what humans are capable of doing to each other and prepare for such disasters.  Natural disasters, on the other hand, are an anomaly that we cannot control but it is within our wisdom to be prepared for such states as well.  We have the ability to predict certain items of disaster and others we do not, but through our history, we can know with details of what can occur.

Being prepared does not just fall on the physical aspect of our existence but it also includes the spiritual as well.  The spiritual aspect of our lives falls into this tomorrow category as well for if we are not guaranteed a physical tomorrow the spiritual aspect of our lives will follow suit to the physical automatically.  While we are spending time studying how to survive physical disasters we need to spend even greater amounts of time understanding the spiritual tomorrow for our lives.  God’s Word provides us with a stable outlook of what our futures hold but none of us know when the physical shall end and the spiritual begins, and by this, I mean that the spiritual is eternal and when the physical dies the eternal begins and thus cannot be changed.

In many of the writings that God has given us, He has always included human history, in some sort of fashion, to use in order for our hearts to understand what He is saying.  The important thing to remember here is that when God sends us messengers for His instructions He uses both the physical and the spiritual sides of our lives to complete His message.  All of the writers of the Bible were divinely inspired by God to write what God wanted them to say, for what He wanted to say to His people.  These brave individuals used both the spiritual context of their surroundings and the physical conditions of their surroundings in order to convey God’s message to future generations.  It is through this truth alone that it is imperative that we understand both aspects of our past in order to live fluently and vibrantly today and at the same time be prepared for tomorrow as much as possible.

Time and time again it has been proven that if we do not understand and apply both of these aspects to our lives we shall fail miserably for we have left out the important step in our human equation.  God is the Creator of all things and that includes US.  It is no secret that we tend to ignore our history, we cannot even teach the subject in school in a way that makes it interesting enough to draw noticeable attention for the students, much less learn from it and then live by it.  So, if the physical aspect of history is ignored that means that the spiritual aspect of our lives will be ignored as well, which is far more important of information than the physical.

I cannot help but believe that when Proverbs 27:1 was written it was done so with the idea that both God and human history would be taken into consideration for our living for today and to be prepared for tomorrow.  In order for God to be complete in all His ways, He must include both the physical and the spiritual truths in His Word and when He explains the details of how to live it is our responsibility to study these truths and teach our children by example of how to live according to what God’s Word has to say.  It is evident that on both levels we have checked out of the true system of living and have done things our own way, so much so that our actions are reflected as we sit in church as well, a sign that we have fallen away from the true source of life and chosen to follow a failed path instead.

I love this simple, short and to the point verse in Proverbs because it says so much in just a few words.  It includes all of God’s eternal blessings mixed in with the truth about the physical aspects of our lives and when we understand that both portions of our lives depend on this verse, it becomes clear exactly how much we need God in our lives to survive such a wicked world.  God loves you and me more than we can comprehend and He has given us the perfect tool to understand how to live abundantly each day.  On the physical side of life, it is a true statement that we may not see tomorrow and what the world may bring but it is the eternal side of our lives that represents the long-term quality of life.  If we understand God’s Word without bias we can defend ourselves properly against what our enemy throws at us and if we do not then we will accept those lies as truths and embrace them instead. 

The effects of living through this verse prove that God’s Word supplies our needs for survival.  For when we apply both the spiritual and physical together it gives us a map and a guide about how to live and our actions will automatically reveal this belief to others.  Look at what our nation and the world offers today and it is evident that we do not and are not willing to live under these perfect and eternal guidelines of God and history.  There can be no evidence of truth when God is left out of the (our) equation, period.  Humanity is continually trying to find a constant so that we may ground ourselves into a belief that is reliable at all times, we have this source and if we only turn our lives over to God we shall find that He is faithful and just to provide such a foundation that we desperately need.  

God is the author of everything which means He has already foreseen the future and knows exactly what to say for us to avoid any major issues from our enemy.  But we cannot understand what to prepare for if we do not fully study His word and apply it to our lives each day.  It is through THIS truth that defines our today and the reason that God says one can only live for today.  Open your hearts to God and Church reopen your heart to God for He is the only One that can turn this ugly and ignorant machine into a wonderful musical instrument that plays only glorious music for all to hear.  Repent, Church and allow God to infiltrate our hearts again so that we may understand how to live in complete fullness of life, just as God created it from our beginning.  For if we live in this truth, what God is saying to us in this simple verse is true for we will have no reason to worry about tomorrow.

DLB