“Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.”—Proverbs 27:1.
What a great mercy it is that we do not know “what a day may bring forth”! We are often thankful for knowledge, but in this case we may be particularly grateful for ignorance. It is the glory of God, we are told, to conceal a thing, and it most certainly is for the happiness of mankind that he should conceal their future. Supposing that bright lines were written for us in the book of destiny, and that we could read those bright lines now, and see some of them, we should probably loiter away our time until we arrived at them and should have no heart for the present. If on the other hand we knew that there were dark days of trouble in store for us, and had a presentiment and full conviction as to when they would come, probably the thought of them would overshadow the present, so that the joys which we now drink would be left untasted by reason of our nervous fears as to the distant future. To know the good might lead us to presumption, to know the evil might tempt us to despair. Happy for us is it that our eyes cannot penetrate the thick veil which God hangs between us and tomorrow, that we cannot see beyond the spot where we now are, and that, in a certain sense, we are utterly ignorant as to the details of the future. We may indeed be thankful for our ignorance.
Although however we do not know what a day may bring forth, though we cannot see into what I may call “the immediate future,” yet we have reason to be thankful that we do know something about what is to come, and that we do know what is in the far-reaching future. We differ from the brutes in this respect. When two or three nights in the week I pass on my way home a flock of sheep, or a little herd of bullocks, all going down to the butcher’s, travelling in the cold bright moonlight towards the slaughter-house, I feel thankful that they do not know where they are going, for what would be their misery if they knew anything about death? The lamb’s thoughts are in the fold, and all unconscious of the shambles; it licks the hand that smites it, not knowing of its coming speedy death. It is the happiness of the brute not to know the future.
But in our case we know that we must die; and if it were not for the hope of the resurrection and of the here-after, this knowledge would distinguish us from the brutes only by giving us greater misery. There must be an intention on God’s part for us to live in a future state or else he would, out of mere benevolence, have left us ignorant of the fact of death. If he had not meant our souls to begin to prepare for another and a better existence, he would have kept us ignorant, even of the fact that this one will pass away; but having given us an intellect and a mind which doth from observation and inward consciousness know that death will come, we believe that he would have us prepare for that which will follow and look out for that which is beyond. We do know the future in its great rough outlines. We know that if the Lord cometh not first, we shall die; we know that our soul shall live for ever in happiness or in woe; and that, according to whether we are found in Christ or without Christ, our eternal portion shall be one of never-ending agony or of ceaseless bliss. We may be thankful that we do know this so that we may be prepared for it; but still—to return to that with which we started—we may be thankful also that we do not really know the great future in its details, that it is shut from our eye lest it should have an evil influence upon our life.
Now, Solomon in the Book of Proverbs applied the truth that we know not about to-morrow to the boaster, to the man who said, “To-morrow I will go into such a city and buy, and sell, and get gain, and then go to another city and get more gain, and then when I have amassed so much wealth I will say, ‘Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease; eat, drink, and be merry.’” Solomon seems to come in and put his hand upon the man’s shoulders and to say, virtually, “Thou fool, thou knowest nothing about all this; thou dost not know what shall be on the morrow; thy goods may never come to thee, or thou mayest not be here to trade with these goods at all; so thou buildest a castle in the air; thou thinkest thy fancies are true; thou art as one that dreams of a feast and wakes to find himself hungry! How canst thou be so foolish?” Solomon dwells upon the text very solemnly, and says, “Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.”
I do not intend however to use the text with this object to-night. It struck me that as Solomon uses it here with one design it might be very properly used for another; that as he intends to shame our growing pride and certainty of prosperity, so it might be used especially to cheer those who have a tendency to gloom, and to shed a ray of light into the thick darkness of their fear.
I. It will first comfort those who are fearing and trembling concerning some evil which is yet to come.
My friend, thou art afraid to-night; thou canst not enjoy anything thou hast because of this terrible and fearful shadow which has come across thy path of an evil which thou sayest is coming to-morrow, or in one or two months’ time, or even in six months. Now, at least, thou art not quite certain that it will come, for thou knowest not what may be on the morrow. Thou art as alarmed and as afraid as if thou wert quite certain that it would appear. But it is not so, “Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth,” and since it is uncertain whether it shall be or not, hadst thou not better leave thy sorrow till it is certain; and meanwhile, leave the uncertain matter in the hand of God whose divine purposes will be wise and good in the end, and will be even seen to be so? At the very least, slender as the comfort may be, yet still there is comfort in the fact that thou knowest not what may be on the morrow.
Let us just expand this thought a little to those of you who are fearing about to-morrow. We very often fear what never will occur. I think that the major part of our troubles are not those which God sends us, but those which we invent for ourselves. As the poet speaks of some who
“Feel a thousand deaths in fearing one,”—
so there are many who feel a thousand troubles in fearing one trouble, which trouble, perhaps, never will have any existence except in the workshop of their own misty brain. It is an ill task for a child to whip himself; it might be good for him to feel the whip from his father’s hand, but it is of little service when the child applies it himself. And yet very often the strokes which we dread never do come from God’s hand at all, but are the pure inventions of our own imagination and our own unbelief working together. There are more who have to howl under the lash of unbelief than there are who have to weep under the gentle rod of God’s providential dispensation. Now, why shouldst thou go about to fill thy pillow with thorns grown in thine own garden? Why so busy, good sir, about gathering nettles with which to strew thine own bed? There are clouds enough without thy thinking that every little atom of mist will surely bring a tempest. There are difficulties enough on the road to heaven without thy taking up stones to throw into thine own path to make thing own road more rough than there was any need shalt it should be. Thou knowest not what may be on the morrow. Thy fears are absurd. Perhaps thy neighbor knows they are absurd, but certainly thou oughtest to know it is so. Dost thou not know that the trouble thou art dreading, God can utterly avert? Perhaps to-morrow morning there will come a letter which will entirely change the face of the matter. A friend may interpose when least thou couldst expect one, or difficulties which were like mountains may be cast into the depths of the sea. “Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth,” and the trouble which thou so much dreadest may never occur at all.
Moreover, dost thou not know that even if the if the trouble should come, God has a way of overruling it? So that even thou, poor trembler, shalt stand by and see the salvation of God and wonder at two things—thine own unbelief and God’s faithfulness. Thou sayest that the sea is before thee, that the mountains are on either hand, and that the foe is behind thee, but thou knowest not what shall be on the morrow. Thy God shall lead thee through the depths of the sea, and put such a song into thy mouth as thou never couldst have known if there had been no sea, and no Pharaoh, and no mountains to shut thee in. These trials of thine shall be the winepress out of which shall come the wine of consolation to thee. This furnace shall rob thee of nothing but thy dross, which thou wilt be glad to be rid of, but thy pure gold shall not be diminished by so much as a drachm, but shall only be the purer after it all. The trouble, then, may not come to thee at all, or if it come it may be overruled.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
