Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth (Proverbs 27:1).

The National Collegiate Athletic Association's annual basketball tournament is often referred to as "March Madness" because of its unpredictability.  Nevertheless, one of the most popular pasttimes in America during the month of March every year is trying to predict which teams will advance in the tournament.  Often, this involves "filling out a bracket," which means trying to guess which teams will win each of the 63 games of the tournament, before any of them has been played.  It's a strange mix of art and science to correctly predict the outcome of such a tournament -- and almost no one ever gets it completely right -- but it's a fun little tradition in which I almost invariably participate (lately through the prestigious, though not lucrative, European-based "March Madness Traveling Tropy Contest").

Over the last few years, I've also involved my children in this annual celebration of March Madness.  Their picks are often informed by quirky things like the names of the schools participating; for instance, Olivia has a friend named Siena, so the small New York-based college is picked to advance to the championship game, even though their chances of actually accomplishing this are quite small... But what's crazy is that their guesses are often no worse than mine!  Throughout the weeks of the tournament, we all check the scores together and compare the results with our predictions.  We celebrate when one of "our teams" wins; we groan when the team we might have expected to win the national championship is knocked out in the second round of the tournament.  But through it all, we get to learn a valuable lesson about predicting the future.  We learn that it really is best to "not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth."

So many times, we see that our best, most considered guesses about what might happen are nevertheless incorrect.  We can do absolutely nothing to control the outcomes except watch and wait and stay humble in the process.  Because you never really know what might happen next time around.

My children often cry -- literally, with tears rolling down their cheeks -- when they see their NCAA basketball tournament brackets busted, exposing their predictions for what they really are:  guesswork.  But I, personally, do not see this as a bad thing.  I can comfort them and sympathize with them, yes, but I can also gently remind them that life is essentially unpredictable.  We can make our best guesses about what may happen tomorrow -- or next week, or next month, or next year -- but we really don't know.  That's why we need to depend on God.  It can feel like Madness sometimes, but the sooner we figure that out, the better.