About Tomorrow

Last weekend I was sitting in my home writing in my journal when a wild gust of wind came like lightning through the neighborhood. It drew my attention as I could see and hear it, and it was a lot stronger than a normal gust. Suddenly, I heard a crack and a loud thud. I jumped up, not knowing what that was, and saw a huge tree limb (probably weighing 1,000 pounds by my landlord's estimate) that fell and hit my neighbor's garage, going through the roof. It landed about two feet from his jeep, parked in the grass, not too far from my car.

Thankfully, nobody was injured. I mean any of us could have been outside at that moment. I was going back and forth through the yard doing laundry, and my neighbor is always outside doing things. You just cannot predict what's going to happen in the next moment, or the next day.

It is just a reminder that life is fragile. Sometimes the trees around us are fragile. Things are not guaranteed. I certainly wasn't expecting a huge part of a tree to fall and cause havoc for a while. Just like we don't expect a certain gust of wind to come along to cause that. And we don't expect to hear bad news, or lose a job, or be hurt by someone. But these things do happen, and while we live everyday in hope, we also cannot brag or get a big ego about what we think will happen. We are humans tied to time, so we really don't know. Thankfully, our God is not, and He sees everything all at once, above time and circumstance. That is what I will brag about.

And now I have a word for you who brashly announce, “Today—at the latest,tomorrow—we’re off to such and such a city for the year. We’re going to start a business and make a lot of money.” You don’t know the first thing about tomorrow. You’re nothing but a wisp of fog, catching a brief bit of sun before disappearing. Instead, make it a habit to say, “If the Master wills it and we’re still alive, we’ll do this or that.”
James 4.13-15