Some thoughts about the future are reassuring. Others can leave you wondering if it wouldn't just be better to stay in bed and avoid the whole idea of facing the new day and the year it brings with it, but you know you cannot do that. That's the thing about the future. You have to face it whether you want to or not no matter what your thoughts may be. Even if you decide you won't wake up tomorrow, you still have to face the future waiting on the other side of the veil. You cannot escape moving into the future. You can only decide your attitude about it as you do.
Consider these thoughts:
1. It's inevitable that the future will get here.
2. You will face the future with what you are whatever that may be.
3. Your attitude as you face the future is under your control.
4. Decisions made today determine future results.
5. You cannot change past decisions, but you can make decisions today that will change short and long range results in the future.
6. Other people's futures will be affected by your decisions in both short and long term impact.
7. God's plan for the future is bigger than yours.
8. God's plan for the future has a guaranteed conclusion.
9. Each person is in God's plan whether they want to be or not.
10. Each person can choose his or her part in God's plan but they cannot avoid it.
11. God's plan is the best whether it feels that way or not.
12. Following God's plan gives the best future most often seen through hindsight.
We are stuck with a future, even those who do not think they have one. We might as well make the best of it. The future has little that is fair about it just like the present. You cannot avoid seeing the innocent get clobbered or the guilty get away with their sins. That is the result of living in a world ruled by sin. It rains on the just and the unjust. The sun shines on the righteous and the unrighteous. That is the result of a Creator-God who is always offering a second chance. The Golden Rule remains one of the best life patterns ever given to man.
Perhaps it is simply that God is watching to see how his children will respond to the future and all that it holds even while he calls them to be like his Son in preparation for an eternal future that is beyond our greatest dreams. Gold and silver are refined by the fire, not destroyed by it.
