I Know Who Holds Tomorrow

 

We have finally put 2020 in the rear-view mirror!  We never saw it coming, but the year “that will live in infamy” ran us over like a Mac Truck. 2020 has been very painful.  We’ve been isolated with shut-downs to “flatten the curve” and quarantined folks who may not be sick but may have been exposed.  Some people have lost their jobs and many businesses have closed their doors, never to open again.  Worst of all, many of us have loved ones or friends who have succumbed to the virus.  We’ll never see them again or hear their voice this side of heaven.  Too many of us have felt that grief. I’m sure you’re as glad as I am to move on down the road into 2021.  The question remains, what will this new year bring for us?

We’ve got lots of questions, to be sure.  Now that we have effective vaccines available, how long will it take until we’ve reached “herd immunity” so that we can return to some sense of normalcy?  2020 was a year of deep political animosity.  With a new year and a new administration, will that division deepen or will we come together to address our many challenges?  In my own world of local church ministry, I wonder what the experiences of 2020 have formed in my congregation and how many folks will return to corporate worship when it is completely safe to do so.  And what will church ministry be like after the effects of the pandemic have completely subsided?  I’m sure business owners are wondering the same thing in their own concerns.  What does the future hold?

The straight answer is, “We don’t know.”  

We live in today, not tomorrow. 

People of faith, however, are well-equipped to deal with the uncertainty of the future.  Seventy years ago, Ira Stamphill wrote these words that are especially relevant in times of uncertainty:

“I don't know about tomorrow,

I just live from day to day;

I don't borrow from its sunshine,

For its skies may turn to gray.

I don't worry o'er the future,

For I know what Jesus said;

And today I'll walk beside Him,

For He knows what is ahead.”

(Ira F. Stamphill © 1950 by Singspiration, Inc.)

Ira Stamphill was one of the most gifted musicians and evangelists of the twentieth century.  Primarily self-taught, Stamphill was accompanying preachers with his music by his late teens and began his own pulpit ministry when he was 22 as an Assembly of God minister.  “Into each life some rain must fall,” it is said, and Ira Stamphill experienced a flood of sorrow when his first wife abandoned him and filed for divorce in 1948.  For a preacher in the conservative Assembly of God Denomination in the mid-twentieth century, divorce was nearly a death sentence on one’s calling.  Many believed that divorce disqualified a minister regardless of cause.  I’ve never experienced the devastation of divorce, but I’ve known the despair of wondering if I still had a ministry and a job.  It is a dark journey, indeed!  Though the circumstances may be different, I know many are experiencing the same dark uncertainty today because of the economic effects of the pandemic. 

It was in the depths of that despair that hope was sparked, faith rekindled, and a new song was birthed in Stamphill’s heart.  Remarkably, he wrote:

“I don't know about tomorrow,

It may bring me poverty;

But the One who feeds the sparrow,

Is the One who stands by me.

And the path that is my portion,

May be through the flame or flood;

But His presence goes before me,

And I'm covered with His blood.”

There are many things about 2021 that we will not know until live through those days.  But for people of faith, we can take comfort in the reality that God is already in the future; he is not bound by time like us.  He has control of everything and he holds us securely in his arms.

“Many things about tomorrow

I don't seem to understand;

But I know who holds tomorrow

And I know who holds my hand.”