What Lies Ahead

https://odb.org/MY/2022/11/23/trusting-our-future-to-god

Just by way of illustration but based on true events – let’s say we had bought a piece of stock in the open market for RM1.50, and it has lately been hovering between RM0.90 and RM1.20. To buy and sell at the current price range means we are losing money compared to our original price, but if we could buy at RM0.90 and sell at RM1.20, we would theoretically be breaking even (excluding stamp duties and broker commission) and if we manage to do that twice or more, we would be making some money. But what happened to me was that after I bought it at RM0.90, the price dropped further to RM0.80, and now I have lost RM0.70 for the first stock and RM0.10 for the second stock bringing my total loss to RM0.80 when I would have only lost RM0.30 if I had sold the first stock at RM1.20.

The point is we will never know what will happen next, and stocks are probably one of the best illustration because the price could change the next minute and this is particularly so when it comes to crypto currencies.

But take it further into our lives, and although the reality is likely to be less dramatic, we could be breathing one minute and no longer breathing the next. This is because people have died from a heart attack or cardiac arrest just like that. We could be communicating with them on WhatsApp one moment and the next total silence because they are dead. Or just a simple thing like what happened to me at breakfast yesterday morning. One moment, I had just started drinking coffee from the glass, and the next moment, I actually dropped the glass and spilled nearly 80% of the coffee onto the table, my shirt and pants! Fortunately, I only spilled it to my side of the table, and thus not a drop went to my wife’s side. It was dramatic as everyone in the shop looked at me, and the workers were kind in cleaning up the mess I made. If I knew that this would happen, I would have gripped the glass tighter or drank using the spoon. But we will not know and can’t know. That’s how we are made. We have no power or ability to see the future, not just in months or years but even in the next second or minute.

What then is our plan for the future? We take what life throws at us? We try to plan as much as we can but react and adapt as we go along? Yes, that’s what most of us will and can do. But the Bible teaches slightly differently. In Ecclesiastes 2, although we see that life is vanity or meaningless, by the end of the book, the author (believed to be Solomon and the wisest man alive then) advises that we trust our life and future to God. Life is meaningless at the core. We are born, we live, and we die. We don’t know exactly what lies ahead. We come to the earth naked, and we die naked. Yet if we have God in our lives, we will see that life is meaningful and purposeful because we could fulfil God’s plans and purposes for our lives. God have set eternity in our hearts, and with Jesus in our lives, we have eternal life. Though our body will die, our spirit will live on, and one day, our body will be resurrected with Christ.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, even as we go about our daily lives today, commit our life and our future to God. Trust Him with our future. Give Him our lives that His will may be done in our lives. Although we still do not know what will become of us the next moment, we know our life is in good hands if it is with God. Follow His voice and prompting in all that we do, and life will not be vanity anymore! Our life will then be purpose driven, driven by God’s plans and purposes for us!