seekeroftruth
Well-Known Member
James 4:13 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.
This is from the commentary.
This attitude that James challenged goes far beyond making wise plans for the future. “Not, let us go, but, we will go, in the indicative mood; noting the peremptoriness of their purposes, and their presuming upon future times and things, which were not in their power.” (Poole)
For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away: James asked us to consider the fragility of human life, and the fact that we live and move only at the permission of God. James does not discourage us from planning and doing, only from planning and doing apart from reliance on God.
To him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin: James knows that it is far easier to think about and talk about humility and dependence on God than it is to live it. Yet he makes the mind of God plain: as we know these things, we are accountable to do them.
To him it is sin: Jesus told a story with much the same point in Luke 12:41-48. The story was about servants and how they obeyed the master in the master’s absence. Jesus concluded the story with this application: For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more (Luke 12:48). Greater light gives greater responsibility.
Oh geeze.... James, aren't we allowed to dream ahead? Proverbs 27:1 Do not boast about tomorrow,
for you do not know what a day may bring.
Did you notice the later part of verse 14? We are like a mist... here now... gone in a blink. Yesterday it dawned on me.... In October this year... I will join the 2% club. Only 2% of the humans who have had Stage IV Metastatic Colon Cancer live 10 more years. If I make it to October... I will join the 2% club.
Then I read "But through the grace of God" in response to yesterday's verses. Then today I saw "you're just a mist, here today, gone tomorrow".
God has work for me to do, or He would not have me here. I am aware that it sounds like a bit of braggadocio, claiming God would use me.... but chemo is a pretty toxic thing to go through with no promise of tomorrow. Actually, if I wanted to get to Heaven, as I claim, why would I go through chemo to keep me alive here on earth?
Colon cancer is stinky. I'm full of it.... I actually think God just wants me to stick around all stinky for a reason.
I'm like a long fart... I'll fade away... and when I do, will people remember me as a "mist" or a "long fart"?
Am I just a long fart?
