Today is bright and sunshiney, yet we’re expecting snow this weekend in Iowa. The kids are thrilled, since that means they’ll get to go sledding. For Mom, that means I need to be sure to get all my errands run tomorrow, before the snow arrives! So today is filled with paying bills, cleaning the house for the weekend, and getting shopping lists made. Whew!
Who can predict the future? We sure try, don’t we? Yet we never know what tomorrow will bring. James 4:13-17 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 and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” (NIV) BibleGateway.com – Passage Lookup James
Yeah, it’s easy to get so caught up in my “to do” list that I forget to quietly come before the Lord and ask His will on my plans. I forget to be still and know that He is God. I forget to come into His presence and quiet my mind. I forget to listen to Him.
And the result is pride, boasting and bragging. Then of course, I don’t do the good I know to do. (How was I suppose to know what good to do? By asking the Lord, that’s how.) The final conclusion is sin.
I want my weekend to be worthwhile. I want to accomplish my shopping, my housecleaning, and my bill paying. But I also want to be willing to set any of it aside if the Lord changes my plans. So “if it is the Lord’s will, I will live and do this or that.”
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