4 Boasting about tomorrow
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 a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
James 4: 13-14 [NIV]
James 4: 13-14 [NIV]
James takes issue with the businessman – not because he wants to make money, not because he plans for the future, but because he thinks the future is under his control. He boasts about what he can do but he leaves God out of the equation.
Who knows what is going to happen in the future? Some people have got it wrong in a spectacular fashion. Here are a few of their predictions:
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
[Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943]
We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
[Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.]
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
[Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1895.]
We can get so used to the daily routine of living our life that we forget that we have no ultimate control over it. We get annoyed when the smooth running of our life is disrupted by a tailback on the motorway, a piece of technology which will not work or a domestic emergency or illness.
A Syrian Bishop put it like this: I don't know what the future holds, but I do know who holds the future.
We need to lead our lives in the full expectation that God may well break in at some stage and change the plans we have made. He is God, after all.
Lord, help me not to be so attached to the plans I have made that I have no time for yours.
David Long
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