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 it vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” — James 4:13-15

Reflection:

Recently as I’ve been considering how the COVID-19 pandemic affects life, I have been reminded of how unpredictable the future can be.

James reminds us in this passage that we ought to recognize that our future projections and plans are contingent upon the will of God. He seems to be pushing back against seeking security on the basis of our own plans and actions to secure our future. Though James cautions us about planning for the future, he isn’t telling us that we shouldn’t plan for what the future may bring, and act accordingly. This is the essence of wisdom — the ability to consider and choose actions on the basis of their likely outcomes.

As James shows, the key is to grasp the concept if the Lord wills. Our plans for the future go off the rails when we treat them as a given and place our hope in them. Most of us would probably not consciously say that we can rely on the future, but I know I myself often function as if I can rely on my vision of the future, and I place my hopes and desires in that vision. I take my (often unconscious) vision of the future for granted and expect it as a right. And I naturally want a good future in this life, filled with good things.

Ultimately, God guarantees us no particular future in this life. As James says, we are but a mist that appears and then vanishes. This is very hard to accept. But it is clearly the truth, and times like these break the illusion that we know what to expect. I think this often rocks us to the core, because many of us struggle to accept that even though God is in control, we really have no idea whether tomorrow will bring joy or sorrow, life or death. In one sense life is just as unpredictable for us as Christians as it is for our non-Christian neighbors.

Yet God does guarantee us a particular future in the life to come. It is a future beyond what we are truly able to hope or imagine. I think the reason we are so tempted to place our hope in a good earthly life is that we struggle to envision and believe that life with God will be better than “our best life now.” Perhaps we need to cultivate a better vision of God and the life he has for us.

I don’t know how COVID-19 fits into God’s Kingdom purposes in the world, and perhaps I never will. But I can see him using it to teach me this lesson yet again, a lesson which he has to teach me over and over again: my current life is to be one of toil and suffering for the Kingdom, and the resurrection is to be a life of glory and rest in the presence of God.

Response:

1. What is the difference between faithful planning for the future and unfaithful (or sinful) expectation? How can you avoid the latter?
   
   
2. What expectations do you have for your own life on earth, and how do these expectations (and how you feel about them) fit with your future hope of resurrection and life with God in the world to come?