If Tomorrow Never Comes
As I write this, it is 11:55 PM and I am on the brink of another tomorrow, but then I could have a massive MI and be gone before the new day. No next minute is guaranteed. Garth Brooks sang a song that spoke to the issue of our mortality. The lyrics ponder if the singer made sure that his wife was sufficiently aware of his love for her and if he had prepared her to live without him.
Death is one subject no one really wants to talk about. We always live as if it happens to everyone else, but IF it happens to us it will be happen many, many years from now. I remember one of my mother’s friends brag that he would live to be a hundred. He made it to fifty. I am now fifty and my father was killed at twenty-nine and my mother made it to just past her fifty-fifth birthday. At 46, I had a MI and have 4 stents. A visiting speaker at our jail ministry told the prisoners that he was 65 and that he expected to drop dead any day. When one considers the Bible’s reckoning of threescore and ten or fourscore if by reason of strength lifespan then he is fairly close to the end and I am right behind him.
I see that the clock has gone to 12:03 AM so I made it into that tomorrow, which is now today so tomorrow still may not come and if it does there will be a day when it does not. What will I have to show for my life? When will men say about me? Who will truly mourn my passing besides my immediate family? What will God say when I stand before Him? Will His evaluation of my life be greatly different than my own or other men’s estimation? While some may praise my achievements, other will curse my failings and God will judge both. Praise Him that they will be judged in relation to my acceptance in Jesus by His mercy in saving me and not as a man with no Savior. Still, it will be a somber time and a sad time and quite likely a time of great loss and tears.
We live for such fleeting things and waste our time on things that are destroyed while we are still here, left behind when we go or will be destroyed when He comes. I am in the preparing heavily for retirement mode though I may never retire.
Luke 12:16-21
16 And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully:
17 And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?
18 And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.
19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.
20 But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?
21 So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. (KJV)
This lad had a great retirement program. He had assets somewhat like Howard Hughes who left them behind and Bill Gates who will leave them behind. He was all set to enjoy that program and then he was gone. Most likely someone inherited his riches and squandered them away in no time because they did not earn or understand the value of what they possessed. No wonder some wear the hat that says they are spending their children’s inheritance.
I remember the lad that witnessed to me used this verse because I was the epicurean heathen that was living verse 19 though I had not amassed any wealth. I still followed the lifestyle. When I found it by using the concordance he was teaching me to use I rejoiced until he showed me verse 20. Can we even imagine the tragedy of being so wealthy among men and then appearing in tattered beggar garments or naked before a thrice-holy God? Those who lost all in the crash of 1929 or the .com disaster did not experience near the lifestyle change and despair that this man experienced. Yet, we continue to live like him even if we are saved.
Rev 18:11-15
11 And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:
12 The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble,
13 And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.
14 And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.
15 The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, (KJV)
There will come a day when this prophecy will be fulfilled for the world in general, but how often is a similitude of this fulfilled daily in individual lives? Jobs are lost and marriages destroyed for the lust of such things. Though my job is fairly secure I am not silly enough to think that there is no chance that I could lose it and everything I have worked for these past 32 years. I remember a couple praising God for the house that was much larger and more expensive than the one that they had. A couple of years later they were divorced. Did they lose each other the kids endure the horror of divorce because they spent more time on things than God and each other? It is the best-guessed scenario. It may have been something else, but usually it is because they have drifted apart while grasping for things they could not keep losing what they what they could not afford to lose the most.
James 4:13-17
13 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:
14 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.
15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
16 But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.
17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. (KJV)
When it comes to doing the things we want to do, we often never find enough time yet imagining that we will get to it someday because we have lots of time. So soon, time runs out and all the things we cared so much about do not get done or get undone by the co-worker that takes our precious job or by the one who marries our spouse.
Sometime we mean to get around and getting right with God but we don’t have time right now. We have things that must be done and people that must be met. If we are saved, we are always going to find our gift and serve him sometime, but we have degrees to be earned, children to be raised and mortgages to be paid and vacations that we just have to have or burn out. Then time runs out and we face Hell because we neglected the many times God gave us to get saved. We lose rewards that would make all of the riches of this world because we were too busy chasing baubles instead of laying up treasures that would last for eternity.
Friend, what if tomorrow never comes? What will be said of your life by God, "Depart from me you worker of iniquity or enter thou into the joy of your Lord?" You better find time to come and reason together with Him about your sin and soul before you spend eternity weeping over lost time.
Brother or Sister, what about you and I? Will we hang our head in shame begging to come back that we might have more time to get our life on the schedule for Him that we should have had been on from the moment we were saved? Will the time between the start of our tears at the Bema until the moment He wipes away all tears seem like an eternity? It is time to be mature sons and daughters for tomorrow may never come.
Eph 5:15-16
15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. (KJV)
1 Pet 4:1-2
1 Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin;
2 That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. (KJV)
1 Pet 4:17-18
17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
18 And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? (KJV)
Rev 1:3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand. (KJV)
