Focus
Stop and thank God for being present with you today. Ask for God’s guidance as you hear God’s voice through scripture and the writer.
Read
James 4:11-16
11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another, speaks evil against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. So who, then, are you to judge your neighbor?
13 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.” 14 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. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.
Reflect
All my life I have heard people say “Lord willing I will do this or that.” As a youngster, I always thought it an overly cautious statement and wondered how it had fully originated. Those types of statements find their beginnings in this passage from James. James warns us that we should not take tomorrow for granted. First, we never know if we will live to see tomorrow. Our experience tells us that it is highly likely we will live to see tomorrow, but there is no guarantee of what tomorrow will be like. Many of our concerns today were not even on our radar one year ago. For example, no one had even heard of Covid-19, yet it has altered our lives in dramatic ways. Each day is precious and we should focus on how we can do the work of God today and not what we will or won’t do tomorrow. Far too many times we pass by opportunities to serve God today using the justification that at a later time or season in life we will do more for the Kingdom. How many times I have heard someone say, “When I retire I will serve the Lord” or “when my kids are grown I will serve the Lord.” We must treat each day as a direct blessing from God and use it in service to Christ.
Pray
Gracious God, we thank you for today and all of its blessings. Help us to live today as the true blessing it is. Open our eyes to the opportunities around us to serve you and to do your holy will. We ask this prayer in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Go with God!
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