Tomorrow

James 4:14, “Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and vanishes away.”

The theme of yesterday and this morning that God is hitting my spirit with is “tomorrow.” Yesterday our Sunday message included a segment that discussed planning. It was noted that those who planned in the greatest detail were the most successful.

[I personally doubt that study because in my lifetime I have seen numerous detailed plans, business plans and otherwise, fail. And there is no correlation between having plans and those plans succeeding.]

But I digressed…

The point is there is “a” voice saying the future (tomorrow) depends on your plans.

Then this morning I watched an interview by Oprah of Joel Osteen. When asked if poor people don’t pray enough Joel in essence responded by saying there are some good people who haven’t gotten their “breakthrough” yet. He mentioned God’s plans for us and how life is designed to be lived abundantly. So another voice says, the future depends on you praying and believing.

Then I open Henri Nouwen’s daily devotional e-mail and again the same theme but a different take. “Often we want to be able to see into the future. We say, 'How will next year be for me? Where will I be five or ten years from now?' There are no answers to these questions. Mostly we have just enough light to see the next step: what we have to do in the coming hour or the following day. The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark. When we are able to take the next step with the trust that we will have enough light for the step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go.”Henri’s voice says we can’t do anything about the future… just enjoy what you can see today.

Who is right? Are they all right? Is there even a right and wrong?

To that I say if God tells you to plan, then plan. If God tells you to believe, then believe. And if God tells you to not worry about tomorrow the don’t worry, but enjoy the light of today.

As for me, I will follow Christ in His words of Matthew 6:33, “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” For me Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:34 ring truest when He said, “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

In the end it is up to God to bless. As for being able to invoke God’s blessing in our life through prayer or pious behavior, I for one believe this is impossible under the New Covenant. And yet I write this being blessed on every front. Ten years I have struggle financially, and yet in January 2012 I could make more than all of last year. For six years I lacked companionship, and yet God had given me an awesome soul-mate and companion; a woman strong enough to stand against the hardest of my character flaws. Health and happiness are also mine. Will it continue into tomorrow? I have no idea. Did I plan for this to happen? Absolutely not, in fact my plans looking nothing like this. Did I have faith to get here? Probably, but still believe it to be irrelevant. What I know that I have done is just seek God. I have tried to simply obey to the degree I could hear and understand His commandment. I am thankful the obedience is accompanied with some comfort, but that certainly has not always been the case. 

Do I think this is forever, that prosperity and health and happiness will never leave me? I have no idea, nor concern myself with whether it stays or goes. My heart is to be with God and to be with Him when He says bless, and to be with Him when He takes away.

Want to know that tomorrow will be ok? Then obey God today.

And having written this I read this from Richard Rohr through my friend Jim Spivey, “Don’t look forward or backward in your mind for explanations or consolations; don’t try to hide behind any secret special way that you have practiced and now can recommend to all! Few certitudes now, just naked faith.  This is nothing you have to come to or crawl down to by effort or insight.  You have been taken there, and your ‘there’ is precisely ‘nothing.’ This kind of God is almost a disappointment, at least to those who were in any way ‘using’ God before.  There is nothing to claim anymore – no securing or winning at something.  God is not a prized possession of any type, not for your own ego or morality or superiority or for control of the data.  This is the ‘nada’ of John of the Cross and the mystics, and this is Jesus on the cross.  Yet it is a peaceful nothingness and a luminous darkness, while still an ‘affliction.’  In the second half of the spiritual life, you are not making choices as much as you are being internally guided, taught, and led – which leads to ‘choice-less choices.’  These are the things you cannot not do because of what you have become, things you do not need to do because they are just not yours to do, and things you absolutely must do because they are your destiny and deepest desire.  Your driving motives are no longer money, success, or the approval of others.  You have found your sacred dance.  Now your only specialness is in being absolutely ordinary and even choice-less, beyond the strong opinions, needs, preferences, and demands of the first half of life and the people who populate that space.  You do not even need your ‘visions’ anymore, because you are happily participating in God’s vision for you.  With that, the wonderful dreaming and the dreamer that we were in our early years have morphed into Someone Else’s dream for us.  We move from the driver’s seat to being a happy passenger.  We are henceforth a ‘serene disciple,’ living in our own unique soul like never before, yet paradoxically living within the mind and heart of God, taking our place in the great and general dance.”