Summary
The Asterisk Next to the Future
Think of the asterisk in fine print: that little mark which signals a condition, a qualifier, something that limits the bold claim above it. The past has no asterisk—what happened, happened. The present has no asterisk—it is what it is. But the future? The future always carries an asterisk beside it, and Scripture insists we not pretend otherwise.
Proverbs 27:1 warns, "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day will bring." Ecclesiastes asks who can show a man what will be after him. And in Luke 12:16-21, the rich man with the bumper harvest plans bigger barns and decades of ease, only to hear God say, "You fool! This very night your soul is required of you." The future he had so neatly arranged was never his to arrange.
James drives the point home in James 4:13-15. "Come now"—listen up—"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.'" Notice the confidence: the time is set, the place is fixed, the duration determined, the activity planned, the result assumed. James interrupts: "Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." Job and the Psalms echo the same note—our days are like a runner, a shadow, grass that flourishes and is gone when the wind passes over it Psalm 103:15-16.
What sin is James exposing? The quiet conviction that we, and not God, are masters of our destiny. The corrective is right there in verse 15: "Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'" Paul lived this way—"I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills" 1 Corinthians 4:19; "I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits" 1 Corinthians 16:7; "I will return to you if God wills" Acts 18:21. The older saints used to say it plainly: "If the Lord wills and the creek doesn't rise." Every breath, every heartbeat, every blink belongs to God. He spends a lifetime returning us to the simple dependence of a child upon a Father.
The asterisk beside the future can breed anxiety, fear, and dread—but only if we look at it alone. The Christian doesn't know what tomorrow will bring, but does know who holds tomorrow. He is already there. He is the one who claimed us in the waters of Baptism, who sent His Son to the cross to pay our sin debt and reconcile us to Himself, who calls us His own children, and who has secured a future that runs into all eternity.
So we give thanks for yesterday, even the hard yesterdays, because there we see God's grace lifting broken pieces off the floor. We give thanks for today, rooted in the empty tomb of Easter and the victory of Christ the King. And we give thanks for every tomorrow, because the tomorrows belong to Him. Beloved, fear not the asterisk—see "Tomorrow".
Video citations
- "Tomorrow" 11-21-21 — Would you open your Bibles, please, with me to the fourth chapter of the book of James for our study today? If you're using a Pew edition of Holy Scripture, you're going to find that page 200 and 4,…