TOMORROW?

As I write this on this 8th day of April, 2025, I have reached the point that I decided that watching the evening news, especially the national news, was something I could do without.  Things are chaotic, seemingly on the brink of World War III.  And accompanying political storms are natural storms of prophetic proportions.  Do we need to see a label that decries “God’s judgment” is upon us? 

 While I realize that the bad, the ugly, the decadent  news “sells” better, I have also come to recognize that the major news outlets not only “sell” the “bones” of the news, they always put a “spin” on whatever they broadcast so that they can promote their own secular and political agenda.  The doom and gloom actually going on in our world is bad enough, but the spin they put on it just makes it worse.

               But in all this doom and gloom, a saw a spark of light!  In my mutterings and murmerings, I recalled the words of a song that I heard many years ago, at a men’s retreat that I had attended.  I was probably 23 or 24,having been recently baptized when, with my pastor, attended this state-wide retreat.  The featured speaker, whose name I can’t recall, was the Chief of Surgery at the City of Hope Hospital in Los Angeles.  The featured singer, whose name I do recall, was Merrill Womak, an outstanding operatic tenor who had been badly burned just a couple of years earlier in a plane crash, a plane that he was piloting.  The crash had occurred at a small airstrip near where I lived during all my high school years, Chemult, Oregon.   Beaver Marsh, the location of the air strip, was only six miles from Chemult, on Highway 97 in central Oregon.  But I digress.

               Both the speaker and the singer were outstanding, and I still recall the central theme of the Doctor’s message, that and one song.  The speaker challenge was for those in attendance to make a commitment when they got back home to get up at 5:00 every morning and spend an hour in reading the Bible and in prayer.  I went home inspired by this charge and determined to put it into practice.  And I did!  While I can’t make a list of the results of spending this time in the morning with the Lord, I do attribute the fact that within less than a year, I had received a promotion and a transfer.  I was, at the time, a forester working for the U. S. Forest Service in Crescent, OR. The new assignment was to the Ranger Station in Skykomish, WA. (And here I could digress again to tell about what God did for us and through us in Skykomish but that will have to wait for another day.)

               Getting back to the point that the evening news was simply too depressing, the spark of light was the song that I had remembered, so movingly sung by Merrill Womak, that had pierced my heart, was a hymn written by Ira F. Stamphill in 1950.

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.

Many things about tomorrow,   

I don't seem to understand;.

But I know who holds tomorrow,   

And I know who holds my hand.