James 4: 13 – 17 Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.
Reflection Ever since I can remember I have been aware that any arrangements I make about tomorrow, next week, next month (or even later today) must, in one sense, be tentative. Though I suspect, if I am honest, my expectations often have more to do with human failings than my acknowledgement of God’s wishes.
As I was growing up the work ethic was strong in my family and included an acknowledgement that time was a precious gift not to be squandered. The answer to how best to honour that gift needs us to do some good planning so that the time available is utilised as productively as possible. Such planning requires an element of having some confidence in the future.
But of course, this passage from The Letter of James is about far more than how we plan and manage our time. It addresses our tendency to arrogance, a false confidence in our own abilities and our attitude to all that we have and all that we own.
We can imagine that these verses could be the result of a conversation between James and one of the many travelling merchants or tradespeople of the day. In which the traveller was boasting about his expectations for the coming months. Where would be a profitable place to settle for a while? whom he could influence? and who might introduce him to ‘useful’ contacts? If he was a successful businessman his enthusiasm would be likely to take over in his day to day decision making. Any recognition of God’s place in his life would fall way down the order of priorities.
And our response? Perhaps these words ‘let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace’ from the hymn, Dear Lord and Father of mankind – best express the lives we should be aspiring to.
Prayer Drop thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease; take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire thy coolness and thy balm; let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small voice of calm!
J.G.Whittier (1807-1892)
Today’s writer
Val Morrison, Elder and Assembly Accredited Lay Preacher, URC in Doncaster
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