The future. The one thing everyone is concerned about but about which we are mostly ignorant. We can typically postulate with some reliability on certain future matters by being keen observers of the past and present. However, knowing exactly what the future holds is an ability far outside of our reach. To this we can react in one of two ways. We can either live in absolute fear of what tomorrow holds to such an extent that we shut down and allow it to negatively impact our present. Or we can march forward confident that whatever may occur we are prepared to handle it because of the One upon whom we rely.
In Joshua 1 the children of Israel were fixing to cross the Jordan River and engage in a vast land acquisition that would involve incredible difficulties. They had some idea of just how brutal the coming months would be based on the spies’ assessment of the inhabitants in the land (Numbers 13:31-33). However, they were clueless of exactly how everything would occur once they stepped foot into the land for the first time. Joshua particularly must have been feeling somewhat nervous as the people’s newly appointed leader, but God wanted to put him at ease and did so with these words:
“There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them” (Joshua 1:5-6).
No, they had no idea what tomorrow held for them but they were able to confidently march into battle because they knew the One upon whom they could rely. We face similar hardship in life. No it may not involve our lives but it does involve certain aspects of life that we value greatly. But while we don’t know exactly what tomorrow holds we do know:
…that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens…Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (for we walk by faith, not by sight:) we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:1,6-8).
No, we may not know exactly what tomorrow holds, but by faith we know the One that holds tomorrow!
-Andy Brewer