Read: 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.” James 4:13–15
Life is short. We often forget that reality as we plan for the future and get caught up in our own sense of self-importance. We may not like to think of it at first, but we are as impermanent as a mist that appears at dawn only to be burned off by the midmorning sun. One of the ways we deal with our fleeting presence in this world is to further invest ourselves in it. We make plans. We set goals. We strive to make an imprint on the world in which we live. But as our last breath nears, we come to the hard realization that nothing we do is permanent, and we would have been better off simply following the commands of God and trying to live our lives according to the desires of the one who is eternal. Rather than planning for tomorrow, we should strive to serve God today.
Why do you make so many plans?
Lord, if is Your will that I should live beyond this moment, I offer that life to You. I don’t want to feverishly try to leave my imprint on this world. What I really want—what I so deeply desire—is for Your imprint to be evident in my life…however long I have to live. I will embrace today, and if it is Your will…tomorrow I will do the same. In Jesus’ name, I pray. AMEN.