At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“Boast not thyself of to morrow; For thou knowest not what a day may bring forth” (Prov. 27:1).
This proverb presents in brief compass the same instruction that we find in the epistle of James.
“Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” (James 4:13–17).
We are bluntly instructed to make sure we hold all of our tomorrows in an open palm before the Lord. The reason given in Proverbs and in James is the same. We do not know what is going to happen tomorrow, and James adds the detail that our lives are like that three yard bit of mist that came up off the river, and which you drove by on the highway at sixty miles an hour.
Boasting in our own names would be bad enough—James calls it evil. Putting everything together, it is both evil and stupid. Matters are not helped if Christians say that they have determined that it is the will of God to go to thus-and-such city and make a pile of money. You are still a bit of vapor.
We are instructed to encompass all our plans concerning the future with a qualified Deo volente, Lord willing.
