If The Lord Wills

Aug 8, 2023

I’m a planner and I love a color-coded calendar!

Lists of things to do – oh please give me more so I can check things off. There is such a sense of accomplishment you have when you finish the job! Ken and I meet every January to set our goals and request time off throughout the year so we make sure we see our family in Indiana, take trips to No Cal to see our son and family, plan vacations for us, family adventures and getaways with friends. We can tell you everything scheduled for the rest of this year, and even a few things for next year!

That brings me to our topic for today! Pull up on your Bible app or open your Bible and let’s look at 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 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 in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

- James 4:13-17

In this passage, James is mostly speaking to traveling merchants and wealthy landowners about their arrogance in all they were doing. But there are a few points of application for us today.

The theme of the entire fourth chapter is about selfishness and arrogance.

It’s a good reminder for us that we own nothing - everything we have belongs to God! If you’re an Instagram or Facebook power user, it’s also a reminder to be sensitive about what we post. A good screening question to ask yourself: Why am I posting this? Because I want everyone to see all of my travels or new toys? Am I seeking to make myself look better to others?

What stood out to me most, though, as I read through this familiar passage, was verses 15-16. I thought about these verses and remembered Frank and Mildred, Mr. and Mrs. Wade to me, who were friends of my great-grandparents when I was growing up. They were tenants on one of my grandmother’s farms and every Saturday morning in the summer, I’d go with my grandparents to visit. Part of the reason I always went was for the breakfast (made with homemade bread, fresh churned butter, homemade jam, eggs gathered early that morning and bacon from a recently slaughtered pig. (I’m salivating remembering.) We always left their house with eggs, lye soap, homemade bread, a couple of pies and milk for the week. Mrs. Wade would say as we left and the hugs passed all around, “See you next week if the Lord wills!”

If the Lord wills! James was right.

Our lives are a mist that is here one day and gone the next. What if we lived every day with that thought in mind? What if I “Go First” today and make that phone call to a friend or relative to reconcile our relationship? Help my elderly neighbor with yard work? Take the step to make the counseling appointment to get emotionally healthy?