May 29, 2022 | by Pastor Josh Tate | series: Missions Emphasis
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Towards the end of each year a group of my friends and I make predictions for the coming year. I recently looked over our predictions from last December and I was struck by the fact that neither I nor any of my friends predicted Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, or Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. Nothing was said about Elon Musk attempting to buy Twitter, or a leaked draft decision from the supreme court pointing toward a possible overturn of Roe vs. Wade. None of us foresaw the baby formula shortage or $5 gas. Other predictions were made, and maybe they will yet come to pass, but judging by our track record so far, I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. The plain and obvious truth that I take away from this annual exercise is that I don’t know what tomorrow holds. I can make guesses, but tomorrow and all the days that stretch out past that are one big question mark to me.
James 4:13-17, which is the text that we will be studying together this Sunday, says, 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.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
This seems to be a fitting place to conclude our month-long emphasis on missions. None of us know what tomorrow will bring, or even if we will live to see tomorrow, but there is today. How will we spend today? That’s the question.
