Like many people, I often struggle with the sin of worry. I used to tell people that I was a “champion worrier” until I realized that this was something to be ashamed of rather than proclaim. I know men worry, but it seems like it is an affliction that disproportionately targets women. I’m prone to believe that it is an evil contortion of our God-given gifts of nurture and concern. Somehow Satan convinces us that caring equates with anxiety – even the thesaurus draws parallels between the two. In reality, if we truly cared, we would be more than willing to trust our loved ones and our future to the concern of our King – who does a much better job of providing than we ever could.
As I have fought the battle against worry, one of the things that I remind myself is that I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. James 4:12-14 makes this point very clear. We should be careful in arrogantly crafting expectations for the future, because tomorrow may turn out much different than we expect. Instead of trusting in our own plans, we should seek to follow the plans of the One who holds the future, and rely on Him to bring us what we need.
This is all Scripturally sound, but I’m afraid that I often think about this in the negative. In other words, in my mind, tomorrow may be filled with doom and gloom so having expectations of future success may be misguided. This make sense because the context of the passage implies such a situation. However, recently I’ve been reminded that not only are the interruptions of our plans anticipated by us, but so are the unexpected blessings. We don’t know what tomorrow will hold in terms of the challenges we will face, but we also don’t know how God may provide in unforeseen ways. The good and the bad of tomorrow is unknown, which is why I must not trust in circumstances, but in the One controls them. He is good – and regardless of what the future holds – He is faithful through it.
In an age where we have a wealth of information at our fingertips, it can be hard to not know even know the details of the next day. But there is One who does – and His plans for our future will always be better than the ones that we can devise (Rom. 8:28). And we may just be surprised by the unexpected ways He provides.