This week we will read James 4: 13-17
It says, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are just a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”
Wow! That’s a tough verse for those of us planning for retirement. Never mind the last part about knowing what is good and not doing it . . . the previous part about making plans and having dreams for tomorrow seems to fly in the face of what it means to be a responsible person in out culture. James is almost downright un-American!
Yet, James is not so down on making plans and carrying them out as he is about rich people dreaming (or even boasting) about being richer . . . as opposed to dreaming (or even boasting) about serving God. As rich people we should take this as a stern warning. (That’s the tough part.) But as God’s people who have access to the resources that we have in our nation and in our community, we should take it as a charge to boast about the right stuff. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but we do know that whatever happens, we have given our lives to the God who is in charge of tomorrow.
Mark
It says, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are just a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”
Wow! That’s a tough verse for those of us planning for retirement. Never mind the last part about knowing what is good and not doing it . . . the previous part about making plans and having dreams for tomorrow seems to fly in the face of what it means to be a responsible person in out culture. James is almost downright un-American!
Yet, James is not so down on making plans and carrying them out as he is about rich people dreaming (or even boasting) about being richer . . . as opposed to dreaming (or even boasting) about serving God. As rich people we should take this as a stern warning. (That’s the tough part.) But as God’s people who have access to the resources that we have in our nation and in our community, we should take it as a charge to boast about the right stuff. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but we do know that whatever happens, we have given our lives to the God who is in charge of tomorrow.
Mark
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