Through the Seasons

In a Moment

Pastor Matt Chandler of The Village Church recently had a seizure.  They found a brain tumor and it has now been discovered malignant. I just imagine him going about his life and one day it all changes.  What a shock that must have been!  He’s a young man with three small children which somehow makes it more unexpected.

It’s so easy to take life for granted, especially when you’re young (read: under 80).  It’s so easy to plan and work and think and react as if life on earth is eternal.  I’m ashamed to admit there are times I get frustrated by the smallest things.

James 4:13-16 says:

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ – yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.  What is your life?  For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.  Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’  As it is, you boast in your arrogance.  All such boasting is evil.”

But how many times do I find myself boasting in just this way?  Today I am going to do this and that.  This week I am going to do this and that.  Next week I am going to do this and that.  Next year I am going to do this and that.  (And if I don’t get to do the things I planned out then I reserve the right to be highly annoyed.)  The passage says this is arrogance.

According to my online dictionary, arrogance is having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities.

Yes.  That clears it up.  That is what I’m doing.  Who is in control here – me or God?  Who makes it possible for me to “do this or that”?  Who gives me life each and every minute?

Only by the grace of God do I, the brief mist that I am, continue before my little time here is up and I  vanish…which makes the next verse in James a biggie for me:

“So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”  ~James 4:17

Lord, may I live the next moment you give me by glorifying, loving, and thanking You.  Focus my mind on the truly important things in life.  Set my sight on the right thing to do and embolden me to do it.  Amen.