Tomorrow

Tomorrow.  When my baseball teammates would debate the merits of practicing today when the forecast for tomorrow’s game shows 100% chance of rain, my coach would say, “You can’t live your life based on forecasts.” Forecasts are helpful but never binding upon tomorrow.

Tomorrow is an interesting subject biblically (used 55x in the Bible). God, who does not exist on the timeline, often communicates to his creatures who are bound to it in terms of the timeline. In a sense, tomorrow is our word of limitation, but God condescends to use it. God knows that we are finite, so he speaks in a way that prioritizes our understanding of his infinity. For instance, Moses repeatedly told Pharaoh of a plague coming tomorrow: “Tomorrow this sign will happen” (Exo. 8:23; 9:5, 18; 10:4). Could God not have brought this plague today? Of course, but God wanted understanding in Egypt and the world that he is the Eternal God.

Mostly, tomorrow is a simple time marker in the Bible, a reference point: “about this time tomorrow” (1 Sam. 9:16). Yet a few times, tomorrow is a sophisticated metaphor. “Do not say to your neighbor, ‘Go, and come again, tomorrow I will give it’—when you have it with you” (Prov. 3:28). “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” (Prov. 27:1). “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (Isa. 22:13; 1 Cor. 15:32). “Tomorrow will be like this day, great beyond measure” (Isa. 56:12). In a way, the Scriptures confront us to ask the question: what is my relationship to the concept of tomorrow?

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses tomorrow in a figurative sense signifying all that exists outside of our direct control, “Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matt. 6:34). Like Jesus, James again challenges us to investigate our relationship to the concept of tomorrow. “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:13-15). 

Then our question—What is my relationship to the concept of tomorrow?—stands merely as a prelude to a better question: What is God’s relationship to the concept of tomorrow? Just as Jesus reasoned about the sabbath, “The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28), so also his principle applies to the concept of tomorrow. Jesus is not the servant of time; he is the Lord even of time. Therefore, tomorrow is Jesus’ servant, not his master.