A friend told me about a grandmother who encouraged people to eat when there was food, because nobody knew what tomorrow might bring. We were talking about food, nothing particularly solemn. I replied with the familiar words, ‘Tomorrow is promised to no man.’ And then, almost as soon as I had said it, another thought interrupted me: Jesus taught us to ask for our daily bread.
I remember wondering whether the Bible even speaks of tomorrow the way we do. It does, of course. James speaks of merchants announcing their travel, trade and profit plans for the coming year. Jesus speaks of tomorrow’s trouble. In Exodus, Moses actually instructs Israel to preserve food for the following day. So the question wasn’t whether tomorrow exists in Scripture. The question was why I felt so unsettled by something as ordinary as a plan for next week.
It is possible to say that tomorrow belongs to God and then spend nearly every waking hour trying to make it obey us. I know the impulse. There are bills that will arrive whether I am ready or not. People depend on things being finished. There are opportunities I do not want to miss, and a kind of life I would like to experience, not merely imagine. I want to be able to buy what is needed without calculating which other need must wait. I want to work hard enough for the results of my work to become visible in my life. I don’t regard those desires as a confession of weak faith.
But I also know the other temptation: to make my imagined future so important that the present becomes little more than a corridor leading to it. A conversation becomes an interruption. Rest feels irresponsible. Prayer turns into a request for God to bless a schedule I have already declared non-negotiable. I am present in the room but preoccupied with a day I have not reached.
James 4:13–17 does not rebuke people for buying, selling or making a profit. It confronts their certainty. They speak as though the journey, the year and their own lives are entirely theirs to arrange. James introduces a missing condition: whether the Lord wills. That is not an instruction to attach a religious phrase to every commercial decision. It questions the authority from which we speak and act.
And then there is Joseph. In Genesis 41, his response to the years of famine ahead is to design a serious programme for storing grain during the plentiful years. There is planning, administration, measurement, storage and leadership. Preparation is not presented as competition with God’s sovereignty. In the particular account, it is a response to what God has revealed.
Exodus 16 unsettles the easy answer even further. On ordinary days, the Israelites are told not to hoard manna overnight. On the sixth day, they are told to gather and keep enough for the Sabbath. The difference is not that storing food has suddenly changed its moral character. The difference is obedience to what was required of them in each circumstance. We cannot turn that story into a universal household budgeting method. But it does prevent me from treating either accumulation or the absence of preparation as an automatic sign of faith.
I have also been thinking about what this question sounds like to a person who has no surplus to store. The instruction to plan carefully can feel almost insulting when every rand already has somewhere to go. It is easy to praise foresight when you have resources, time and a safety net. People do not all have the same freedom to prepare. That does not mean planning is useless; it means we should never confuse unequal capacity with unequal character.
Perhaps tomorrow is both less and more than I have been making it. Less, because it is not my possession or guarantee. More, because what I do today can protect someone when it arrives. A child may benefit from money saved now. A client may be safer because I worked carefully. A relationship may still be alive because I made the call instead of postponing it. Sometimes a small action today is an extraordinary kindness to a future person we have not yet met, including ourselves.
So I am not proposing that we stop dreaming. I am not asking the entrepreneur to close the business plan, the student to stop studying or the parent to surrender their hope for the family. I am asking whether we can look honestly at the future we are pursuing and the price we are charging the present for it.
Tomorrow is not ours to command. Today is not ours to waste. I still want to build, and I intend to build with courage. But I want my plans to remain answerable to the One who gives me the capacity to make them, and to the people whose lives they touch.
This week, choose one thing that matters for your future. Give it an honest plan. Then ask what needs your attention today that the plan must not be allowed to swallow. Do one responsible thing for tomorrow, and one loving thing that should not have to wait for it.
— Tsholo L. Sehume