Monday 21 May, 2018

13 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.” 14 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. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

As a planner, I spend a fair amount of time looking at my diary and to-do list, working out where the different commitments and responsibilities fit. I look to the weeks ahead, pencilling in plans or locking them in. This passage reminds me that I don’t even know for sure if I’ll be here tomorrow!

What a call to live in the present and to trust God with the future. These verses challenge me to stop rushing, slow down, be in the moment and ask God to show me how to live right now. What does it look like right now to love God and love people?

The writer describes us as a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. I find it strangely freeing, in the grand scheme of things I’m a wisp…. and the universe is not up to me!

God, please help me to live this out today. Amen.

Written by Bethany Waugh