Scripture Verse

Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:34

Introduction

Words: Jess­ie A. Lee, 2012 (pub­lic do­main), alt. by An­ge­la K. Zehr.

Music: An­ge­la K. Zehr, har­mo­ny by N. E. M. (🔊 pdf nwc).

portrait
Jessie A. Lee (1992–)

Origin of the Hymn

I was hired by the Men­non­ite mis­sion in Ro­man­ia to teach the Eng­lish lan­guage to some lo­cal Ro­ma­ni­an child­ren in Păl­tin­iș, Ro­man­ia; as well as teach­ing mus­ic and re­gu­lar class­es to the mis­sion­ary child­ren.

As you can imagine, my days were very full, for af­ter school (8:00 am to 5:00 pm) I vis­it­ed vil­lage­rs re­gul­ar­ly, helped el­de­rly la­dies, ad­min­is­tered me­di­cine and help to the sick and helped in the mis­sion of­fice at times in the ev­en­ing.

I know the Ro­ma­ni­an lang­uage but am not flu­ent in writ­ing it, so I wrote this song in Eng­lish and hand­ed out a Ro­ma­ni­an trans­la­tion at the pro­gram for the child­ren’s par­ents. The idea came to me one hur­ried day as I was clean­ing up my mes­sy class­room and wor­ry­ing how to get ev­ery­thing done.

Suddenly this song popped into my mind—just leave it for to­mor­row. I ev­en had a tune in my mind as I wrote it si­mi­lar to the one An­ge­la came up with; and I sent my po­em around by e-mail to all my ac­quaint­anc­es and fa­mi­ly. Soon An­ge­la e-mailed me and asked if she could put a tune to my po­em; I was ex­cit­ed be­cause I want­ed the child­ren to sing it at the prog­ram any­way.

Jessie Lee, 2015

Lyrics

Just leave it for to­mor­row—
’Cause it’s not to­day,
And trou­bles from the day
Before have passed away!
So take the day God’s giv­en you,
And that’s enough;
Tomorrow may not come,
And yes­ter­day was tough.

Refrain

So leave to­mor­row and to­day on God’s door­mat,
Where ev’ry­thing is bet­ter—leave it just like that!
Don’t pick back up to­mor­row or an­oth­er woe,
Today is where He leads us, and with us will go.

If you would take to­mor­row
When to­day’s not through,
A knot comes in your stom­ach,
And your breath’s short, too,
So that you feel so wea­ry
And can’t take to­day,
So drop to­mor­row and
Let Je­sus lead the way.

Refrain

When we take more our­selves
Than what we ev­er could,
It can’t be joy­ful liv­ing,
Peaceable or good.
God said His yoke is ea­sy,
And His bur­den’s light.
So walk today with Je­sus,
And you’ll win the fight!

Refrain

If you hold on to­mor­row,
It will weigh you down.
You can­not car­ry it
Because to­day’s around.
Alone you will be lone­ly
And the way seems long,
But Je­sus gives you joy,
And you’ll walk with a song!

Refrain